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 Im taking a leak,
but they say very little

Outside Phnom Penh theres a tower, glass-pannelled,
maybe ten meters high,
filled with skulls from the killing fields
Most of them lack the lower jaw
so they dont 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
Bonecoloured Brahma bull grazes wet eyed, (gazes??)
hobbled in hollow of mass grave
In the neighbouring field a small herd
of young boys plays soccer,
their laughter swallowed in expanding silence

This is too big for anger,
its 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 dont fear the spirit
when it comes to call

Sun will soon slide down into the far end of the ancient reservoir
Orange ball merging with its water-borne twin
below airbrushed edges of cloud
But first it spreads itself,
a golden scrim behind fractal sweep of swooping flycatchers
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 sunstreak gleam
stitched in strings across patchwork land
march west toward the far hills of Thailand
Macro analog of Angkor Wats temple walls