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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=365687" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Chinese Box</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">For years, the 'Muse of the Heavenly Gates'<br>Had stood in the shade of a country lane, <br>Quietly tending its residents there, <br>The old, the feeble, the stark insane.<br>The blurb said, here was a heaven on earth<br>For the old to pass their declining years, <br>It said they lived in a quiet content, <br>The truth was actually quite the reverse.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For Matron Margaret Parker-Lang was<br>A nun, expelled from the Carmelites, <br>'Too much of the world', they said of her, <br>When caught indulging in base delights.<br>The years had hardened, had turned her hair<br>An iron grey, and her eyes were cold, <br>She only smiled when the visitors came<br>To pay the fees for their aged, in gold.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She didn't encourage their visits, though: <br>'It's hard, you see, and they get upset, <br>Best to remember them how they were, <br>Their memories fade, then they forget.'<br>Few would revisit the Heavenly Gates, <br>They left them safe in the nurse's care, <br>Who drugged the residents every night<br>So none could complain of their treatment there.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They gathered them all in a stupor, sat<br>In rows, in front of a giant screen, <br>Then played them movies in black and white<br>'Til half the residents there could scream.<br>The food was bland and inedible, <br>So soon they wasted to skin and bone, <br>And those who thought to protest would find<br>They'd confiscated their telephone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The visiting Locum, Doctor Zourk, <br>Had quite a collection of things antique, <br>Whenever he'd visit a prospect's home, <br>They'd be committed, within the week.<br>Then he and the Matron would take their pick<br>Of anything there that took the eye, <br>If anyone later complained, they'd say: <br>'He'd put it out for the rubbish guy! '</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But once in 'The Muse of the Heavenly Gates'<br>The trap would spring, the shades come down, <br>They'd flourish the papers and help him sign<br>His house and his title deeds to them.<br>Again, when his mind was wandering<br>The Matron would sit, and hold his hand: <br>'Organ donation, that's the thing, <br>If you could help, that would be grand! '</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I was away in China, when<br>My father went to the Heavenly Gates, <br>A note from the Matron said, 'He's fine! <br>Our lawyers will help him to sort his estate.'<br>I must have been deaf to the warning bells, <br>My mind was focused, I let it be, <br>I never once thought of the Chinese Box<br>That I'd taken home on a previous leave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I'd happened on it in a Curio Shop<br>In the winding back streets of Xi'an, <br>I'd never quite managed to puzzle it out<br>And finally left the old box at home.<br>I knew it was ancient, marked and scored, <br>With a funny old Chinese symbol too, <br>The Chinese owner had bowed and smiled<br>When I asked what the box could really do.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It came as a shock when my father died, <br>We'd not been together for quite a spell, <br>By the time that I got back home again, <br>They'd taken his organs, eyes as well.<br>Unknown to me, he had signed a form<br>That I knew he'd not in the world have done, <br>To give them the right to his organs, once<br>He had passed away, and his race was run.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I was angry then, but I went on home<br>And braced myself for another shock, <br>Things were missing, a Chinese screen<br>And my beautiful, ancient Chinese Box.<br>My back was up, my suspicions rife<br>I sought out the Matron then, to talk, <br>But found her dead on the slab back there, <br>Dismembered by locum, Doctor Zourk.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He'd taken some of her organs out, <br>They sat in the open fridge nearby, <br>But then she coughed, and she sat up straight, <br>Let out a horrible, piercing cry.<br>The doctor staggered and ran from the room<br>Like a sprinter, racing right out of the blocks, <br>'Watch for that old antique, ' she hissed, <br>'The dragon that came in the Chinese Box! '</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She was breathing for barely a minute more<br>As she fell back onto the blood-soaked deck, <br>But what she managed to whisper there<br>Made the hairs rise up on the back of my neck, <br>She'd solved the puzzle and opened the box<br>When the drawer slid out with a sudden bang, <br>For what had jumped out and bitten her then<br>Was the Dragon of Emperor Qin Shi Huang.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The dragon's venom had paralyzed her, <br>So Zourk had thought she was good and dead, <br>He'd wanted the Box for himself, you see, <br>But she had raided our house, instead.<br>He thought he could sell her organs then, <br>And pick up the box as a plus, as well, <br>Collectors become more fanatical when<br>On that short sharp road to a personal hell! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Box sits there by the mantelpiece<br>Wherever I travel, or think to roam, <br>I've travelled on back to China, so<br>The Dragon will feel that it's safe at home.<br>I heard that the Doctor is doing time<br>For the gruesome murder of Matron Lang, <br>Thank God - I haven't been introduced<br>To the Dragon of Emperor Qin Shi Huang.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">25 October 2008</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=David+Lewis+Paget">David Lewis Paget</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=365687" data-title="Chinese Box de David Lewis Paget" data-description="For years, the 'Muse of the Heavenly Gates'
Had stood in the shade of a country lane, 
Quietly tending its residents there, 
The old, the feeble, the stark insane.
The blurb said, here was a heaven on earth
For the old to pass their declining year..."></div>
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