I've never been to the Mekong but I've heard it cries
when blood spills on its banks, when dissected bodies
wash up on its shore in parts or when drowned eyeballs,
nipped by fish, come floating up.
Is it still the Nile of Life or the Ganges of Purity and Healing?
By now it must be choked with rotten war planes,
shrapnel and bones of people deprived of a voice,
dark people with vision skewed toward survival,
farmers still dying from those chemicals the U.S.
sprayed on their land.
Those bomb craters came like wounds, in fury exploding
souls.
And between Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, there's enough tears
to fill the congested Mekong with their yearning and loss of a few
more generations to come. There's no stopping. They will continue
to hope, and this hope is floating on tears.
Chath Piersath
Copyright © 1997 by Chath Piersath
The Day It Rains The Mekong River The Old Man and His Holy Sea of Sorrow The Way I Want to Remember My Cambodia