Mao's Mausoleum

Mao's Mausoleum

Mao's Mausoleum
Chairman Mao Tse Tung
Everyone in single file
Walking by The Helmsman
I feel they would have walked ten thousand li  just to see
a need to be  part of this reverent community

He lies in rest  Flag on chest
Chinese Communist Party flag
In crystal coffin  granite base  black and inlaid with emblems of Party Nation PLA
One more is etched with date of birth and the day on
which he marched away

The silence here is staggering
Such contrast to the noisy city
streets
The crowds that stream down
Wangfujing
Would all fall silent if he was
to walk among them

In small short steps we shuffle
past and contemplate
the glory of a man
         a simple man 
who led the Vanguard of
Agrarian Revolution
encouraged the development
of a Model Citizen

Removed at Ningdu
Reinstated at Zunyi
Became most powerful
figure in the communist party

Now we return to the light
of the square
I wonder  What happened
in there?
In Mao's Mausoleum
where I was transported
to a timeless space
where reverence was
in order
where Mao stretched across
Thought and Age

to touch our Hearts

Wikipedia ~ Chairman Mao Memorial Hall
【People throughout China were involved in the design and construction of the memorial hall, with 700,000 people from different provinces, autonomous regions, and nationalities doing symbolic voluntary labor.[2] Materials from all over China were used throughout the building: granite from Sichuan province, porcelain plates from Guangdong province, pine trees from Yan'an in Shaanxi province, saw-wort seeds from the Tian Shan mountains in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, earth from quake-stricken Tangshan, colored pebbles from Nanjing, milky quartz from the Kunlun Mountains, pine logs from Jiangxi province, and rock samples from Mount Everest. Water and sand from the Taiwan Straits were also used to symbolically emphasize the People's Republic of China's claims over Taiwan.】