Angkor

Stones, bricks, while still the days’ heat remains at arm’s length while the morning keeps peace before the children come to vend their trinkets and begging voices before the tourists arrive with their us-and-them cameras; let me address you and perhaps you will gain, or regain speech. You do not need to be lectured about the cool sunrise, the blaze that follows through all the day’s long hours, the still horizontal light and warmth of evening: you have lived this cycle a thousand years. The current folly of dollars under your pediments, in your shadows, the sorry touts’ sordid refrain the bland myopia of my own particular faults - these stick as arrows in me, yet slide impotent from your age, solid form, terrible intricacy: you discard them as I cannot, being flesh and conscious, capable of despair or disdain. Can a man wish to be stone? Cathedrals of gods I do not know, you demand yet obeisance. God, known, I have rejected again stubborn, proud (perhaps I am stone already; perhaps I should wish to be neither flesh nor stone but rather air, pure fire, burning as this sun). Stones, crumble slowly with the years, retain your specific beauty. Ants and the elements wage war on you - be firm - yet flex a little as the trees mould their roots around you. They mean no harm, though their charms spell slow, gentle destruction. My apologies. I advise you from my blind experience, make you struggle with my many limitations. When to stand, when bend, buckle? You have authority in these matters, firm rock; my weak clay, unrefined, my breaking shell will look to you for example while I restrain the words that echo empty through my hollow temple.

 

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