{"id":193,"date":"2014-12-22T21:06:07","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T13:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artmartuk.com\/blog\/?p=193"},"modified":"2017-06-07T19:45:02","modified_gmt":"2017-06-07T11:45:02","slug":"apocalyptic-thoughts-in-shanghai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.artmartuk.com\/blog\/apocalyptic-thoughts-in-shanghai\/","title":{"rendered":"Apocalyptic thoughts in Shanghai…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_8499a-853x1280\"<\/a>Suki has been reading my books by JG Ballard, especially his autobiographical writings about early life in war-torn Shanghai. Her response has been to write this poem, which she has given me permission to reproduce – matched with one of my photos of Pudong’s mad skyscrapers. Like me, she can well imagine them collapsing even more quickly than they were thrown up. Remember New York’s Twin Towers..?<\/em><\/p>\n

The survivors
\n<\/strong>
\nStick-thin hipless bare-balconied oblong,
\nup top a penthouse\u2019s smoked-glass pyramid,
\nat the foot topiary peacocks, a marble portico.
\nIts many square eyes stare down,
\ndark spectacles framed in chrome,
\nto where frogs chirrup and giggle
\nin a landscaped swamp among peonies,
\nwillow, a large palm, privet cut in shapes.<\/p>\n

On the day these blank-looking smoothed-off faces
\nrupture with black yowls, the day this concrete
\ntopples into the car-parks, when girders snap
\nlike breadsticks and cars get hammered flat,
\nwhen doors unhinge while lethal dust plumes up,<\/p>\n

on that day these frogs will belly-flop happily
\ninto the water pooling afresh among severed cables,
\nutility pipes up-ended, broken glass, detritus.
\nAcross the trashed city these wide-lipped fat frogs
\nwill plop goggle-eyed into water-holes, barking happily,
\nnot squashed dead under rubble but smiling
\nslit-mouthed, fleshy-bottomed, belching happily
\nthen belly-laughing in this freshly re-created world
\namid the lushly-rotting corpses, succulents,
\nhumidity, the vivid greenery.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suki has been reading my books by JG Ballard, especially his autobiographical writings about early life in war-torn Shanghai. Her response has been to write this poem, which she has given me permission to reproduce – matched with one of my photos of Pudong’s mad skyscrapers. Like me, she can well imagine them collapsing even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","content-columns-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.artmartuk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.artmartuk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.artmartuk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.artmartuk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.artmartuk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.artmartuk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"http:\/\/www.artmartuk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.artmartuk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.artmartuk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.artmartuk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}