At the top of this hospital in Amsterdam is a kinderstad, a “children’s town,” a “place where children between 4 and 18 years old being treated in the medical centre can meet with family and relax outside of the hospital environment.” For reasons that I will not explore in this post, the high location of the glass and titanium structure, and its sad function, has echoes with this passage from Eliot’s “Burnt Norton”:

The surface glittered out of heart of light, And they were behind us, reflected in the pool. Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty. Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children, Hidden excitedly, containing laughter. Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality.