Cambodia 3

Giddy with the thrill of an unplanned holiday,

I’m in Phnom Pen with 3 Americans I hardly know

(coz the fourth pulled out at the last minute),

Just 21, with the world unfurling before us, 

we head straight to the tourist attractions. 

Shelf after shelf of skulls line the book case

and I cannot turn away from the 10,000 eyes,

eye sockets,

trained on me

 

I see myself, staring at myself, 

in a space so quiet 

I feel terror walking beside me 

gazing at the displays together with me, and then at me

The years telescope back to 1978, 1981.

I see myself babbling, gurgling, 

dashing ahead in a walker

when people were piling into mass graves

here. 

Was there a sound? 

My own mind is a black and white TV, 

playing a silent horror film

side by side - 

a child toddling and a young girl falling back into the pit,

her skull extracted and displayed now on this shelf. 

I am about to teach, 

I know of WWII Literature,

an age ago, well before I was born

horros of the past. 

What kind of a teacher am I 

that I do not know of this atrocity 

in my backyard,

when I was a baby. 

I step back, gutted, 

only to find myself reflected yet again

in another shelf of skulls,

I take a deep breath and walk into a classroom of torture 

a secondary school once - 

how pale my own classrooms,

how bright and plastic

against the liquid terror that must have once flooded this place - 

S21. 

I turn and walk now into 

the Killing Fields 

I have walked in

and I cannot walk out 

even now, at 44. 

 __________

Giddy with the thrill of an unplanned holiday,

I’m in Phnom Pen with 3 Americans I hardly know

(coz the fourth pulled out at the last minute),

Just 21, with the world unfurling before us, 

we head straight to the tourist attractions. 

Shelf after shelf of skulls line the book case

and I cannot turn away from the 10,000 eyes,

eye sockets,

trained on me

 

I see myself, staring at myself, 

in a space so quiet 

I feel terror walking beside me 

gazing at the displays together with me, and then at me

The years telescope back to 1978, 1981.

I see myself babbling, gurgling, 

dashing ahead in a walker

when people were piling into mass graves

here. 

Was there a sound? 

My own mind is a black and white TV, 

playing a silent horror film

side by side - 

a child toddling and a young girl falling back into the pit,

her skull extracted and displayed now on this shelf. 

______________________________________________________________________