Postcards From Cambodia

(album: You've Never Seen Everything - 2003)

Abe Lincoln once turned to somebody and said
"Do you ever find yourself talking with the dead?"

There are three tiny deaths heads carved out of mammoth tusk
On the ledge in my bathroom
They grin at me in the morning when I'm taking a leak
But they say very little

Outside Phnom Penh there's a tower, glass paneled
Maybe ten meters high
Filled with skulls from the killing fields
Most of them lack the lower jaw
So they don't exactly grin
But they whisper, as if from a great distance
Of pain, and of pain left far behind

Eighteen thousand empty eyeholes peering out at the four directions

Electric fly buzz, green moist breeze
Bone-colored Brahma bull grazes wet-eyed
Hobbled in hollow of mass grave
In the neighboring field a small herd
Of young boys plays soccer
Their laughter swallowed in expanding silence

This is too big for anger
It's too big for blame
We stumble through history so
Humanly lame
So I bow down my head
Say a prayer for us all
That we don't fear the spirit
When it comes to call

The sun will soon slide down into the far end of the ancient reservoir
Orange ball merging with its water-borne twin
Below air-brushed edges of cloud
But first, it spreads itself

A golden scrim behind fractal sweep of swooping fly catchers
Silhouetted dark green trees
Blue horizon

The rains are late this year
The sky has no more tears to shed
But from the air Cambodia remains
A disc of wet green, bordered by bright haze
Water-filled bomb craters, sun streaked gleam
Stitched in strings across patchwork land and
March west toward the far hills of Thailand
Macro analog of Ankor Wat's temple walls
Intricate bas-relief of thousand-year-old battles
Pitted with AK rounds

And under the sign of the seven headed cobra
The naga who sees in all directions
Seven million landmines lie in terraced grass, in paddy, in bush
(Call it a minescape now)

Sally holds the beggar's hand and cries
At his scarred up face and absent eyes
And right leg gone from above the knee

Tears spot the dust on the worn stone causeway
Whose sculpted guardians row on row
Half frown, half smile, mysterious, mute

And this is too big for anger
It's too big for blame
We stumble through history so
Humanly lame
So I bow down my head
Say a prayer for us all
That we don't fear the spirit when it comes to call