Pearl Bank
i.m. 1976-2019
The pillars, too, regret this.
The columns are full of outcry, staircases
weep, and the glass doors,
whose wheels are still running in their tracks.
In the driveway, left in haste,
are possessions too big for the moving-van:
a bedframe, a mahjong table
with its tiles discarded, a winning hand.
After this morning’s rain,
a smell of death has come to roost among
the debris. Look closely,
someone has emptied out the living,
out here, onto the street.
It is a difficult thing, to see a building
gape, and gape even wider
than the gap between its two front teeth.
Maybe it was the architecture
that singled it out. Socialist,
so, unfit for our times.
No room now for rooms like these,
level lives, a piece of God’s
blue sky for everyone. Capital, land –
the price has changed, though
old factors remain. What, then?
something new must come.
There will be rain again, and rain over
the earth, till another grain
sleeps, wakes, becomes a pearl.

By Theophilus Kwek

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