(I)      The Tree

An old tree,

its trunk leaning

as if to seek the sun.

 

Brightly-coloured cloth bracelets — 

the kind lovers might leave — 

hug it like the padlocks

on the bridges of Paris, the canals of Amsterdam.

 

Nearby, on a live-edged slice of tree,

a sign is printed.

But this isn’t Paris or Amsterdam,

 

it’s Phnom Penh,

the fields at Choeung Ek.

The sign says:

 

Killing Tree

Against Which Executioners Beat Children.

 

(II)      The Towers

We’ve all seen them before —  

they’ve been on the news, in the photo-magazines —

towers of wood and glass

filled with human skulls.

 

Neatly organized, 

murder catalogued vertically by age —

men marked with a blue dot,

women with a red,

 

then many different-coloured dots

to indicate the mode of dispatch:

• Evidence of Killing by Cleaning Rod

• Evidence of Killing by Bayonet

• Evidence of Bullet

• Evidence of Tooth Treatment

• Evidence of Killing by Iron Tool

• Evidence of Killing by Wooden Stick

• Evidence of Pushing Against the Wall

• Evidence of Killing by Hoe

• Evidence of Killing by Axe

• Evidence of Killing by Hook Knife

• Evidence of Neck Cutting

• Evidence of Ear Cutting

• A Foreigner

 

Placed on the bottom shelf 

is a picture of a skull with a hole,

and the cleaning rod a perfect fit.

 

(III)     The Graves

(Magic Tree: a loudspeaker hung on the tree and broadcast music

 to cover the moans of victims while they were executed.)

 

When the trucks arrived, the victims

were led directly to be executed

at the ditches and pits.

 

Their cries still pierce the laden air,

mixed with sounds from the loudspeaker —

a cacophony of death.

 

Mass grave of 166 victims without heads.

 

Mass grave of more than 100 victims 

Children and Women whose majority

were naked.

 

DDT and other chemicals,

sprinkled in the sweaty night —

keep down the stench and finish those buried alive.

 

(IV)     Killing Tools

(Killing Tools Storage Room: Here were the killing tools —shackles, leg irons,

a hatchet, knives, hoes, digging hoes, shovels, and iron ox cart axles.)

 

A palm leaf has the sharpest edge —

cutting a man’s throat

before he can scream.

 

Hoes, shovels, cleaning rods,

were other tools used so effectively

by those brutal gardeners of souls.

 

But not enough — 

the need to kill outstripped the cadence:

… up to over 300 per day, executioners failed 

in their attempt to kill them within a day.

 

And so they built

The Dark and Gloomy Detention —

a fetid hut to detain those too long in queue.

 

(V)     Walking

(Please don’t walk through the mass grave!)

 

Walking the grounds, everywhere, 

among the bits of clothing

you see them protruding:

 

femurs, tibias, ribs — 

the rain raises the water table

and inexorably they too rise. 

 

Small traffic signs,

attached to bright blue sticks,

show a foot with a red cross through it:

 

Don’t step on bone.

 

(VI)   After

When you leave such a place, what do you do?

Compare notes at the hotel bar — surely not.

 

Do you echo Kurtz’s cry?  — 

a cry that was no more than a breath.

 

But that’s not our cry —

not our place, not our people.

 

You just get back to living —

occasionally pause for thought

 

when you look at the pictures

and wonder why.