by Gail Tirone
The faces of two young Portuguese girls
innocent as something out of another century
innocence on a park bench in Macao
city of colonial elegance in decay
Construction encroaches on the wide boulevards
neglect and salt air eat away
monuments to Portuguese men—
once heroes, now unknown
Catholic churches stand like ornate shells from a former era
silent paeans to Jesuit tenacity
Chinese street stalls fill the public squares
sprawling, pungent and chaotic
proffering thousand-year-old eggs and lotus candies
the joy of memory, the art of forgetting
each for less than a dollar
As the Portuguese sit in their concert halls
listening to performances of Rodrigo
as the Portuguese sit in their homes and cafés
eating bacalao and caldo verde
as the Portuguese execute all street signs
meticulously in Chinese and Portuguese
they sit and administrate
in gracious colonnaded buildings erected by their ancestors
waiting near the end of the century
for the lease on their lifestyle to expire
In Macao land reclamation swallows tree-lined promenades
along the once-graceful shore
where sterile rectangles of new land
rise like Venus from the sea
and mountains on the horizon
shrink to hills
Who says you can’t move a mountain?
With a population of one billion people
you can do just about anything
—except stop change.
Gail Tirone has lived in Taiwan for several years, speaks Mandarin, and has travelled widely in Asia. With a BA from Princeton University and an MA in English Literature from the University of Houston, she has taught English at Chinese Culture University in Taipei. Tirone is a Best of the Net nominee. Her poetry has appeared in Blue Heron Review, Sulphur River Review, The Nassau Literary Review, The Houston Poetry Fest Anthology, The Weight of Addition Anthology, and elsewhere. She was awarded First Place and was a featured guest poet in several Houston Poetry Fests.