The riverbanks of Tonle Sap
burned with the sunlight, scorched and unending. 
Their skulls were crushed
against the Killing Tree at Choeung Ek.


Between the trees and the river,
you could still hear the shrill,
distorted loudspeakers,
echoing along the nerve fibers of your torment.
Each night, each day.

You often prayed to that dove,
that had already broken its wings,
or never appeared.

The opposite of peace
did not exist in the dictionary,
but in the homeland’s soil,
reeking of blood and rot.
You went on telling, even accusing:
     — Fallen —
those men with glasses,
lying like malnourished bamboo
in the river water.


You said there were filled Pol Pot’s oblation
for illusive ideal
or just to extinguish the age of silence’s spark.


You possessed the luck granted by God,
escaping from the edge of death,
but your whole soul remained trapped
in that dark summer 
— in Cambodia.
You spent a lifetime telling us:
the only mission, as survivors,
was to seek justice for the dead.

In the ashes and mud，

this is your memory
also we are here too, for everyone.