The story of the Chongqing 'nail house' reminded me of this poem by the Croatian, Vasco Popa (or should it be Vasko? Most of the references to him on the Net seem to favour this spelling, but it was 'Vasco' in the poetry anthology, The Rattle Bag, where I discovered him. There's not much information on him out there - his Wikipedia entry is a stub. Does anyone know anything more about him?). It's part of the macabre 'nursery rhyme' sequence, Games, others of which I have quoted here before.
The Nail
One be the nail another the pincers
The others are workmen
The pincers grip the nail by the head
Grip him with their teeth with their hands
And tug him tug
To get him out of the floor
Usually they only pull his head off
It's hard to get a nail out of a floor
The workmen say
The pincers are no good
They smash their jaws and break their arms
And throw them out of the window
After that someone else be the pincers
Someone else the nail
The others are workmen
From 'Games' by Vasco Popa (tr. from the Serbo-Croatian by Anne Pennington)
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