SONGS:
-- Cambodia --
(unreleased) circa 1999

Lyrics:

Abe Lincoln once turned to somebody and said,
"Do you ever find yourself talking with the dead?"
There are three tiny skulls carved from mammoth tusk
On the ledge in my bathroom
They grin at me in the morning
When I'm taking a leak
But they say very little.

Near Phnom Penh there's a tower
Panelled, thirty feet high
With skulls from the killing fields
Most of them lack the lower jaw
So they don't exactly grin
But they whisper as if from a great distance
Of pain and of pain left far behind

18,000 empty eyeholes looking out at the four directions
Electric fly buzz, green moist breeze
Bone-colored brahma bull grazes
Wet eyed, hobbled in the hollow of mass grave
In the neighboring field
A herd of young boys play soccer
Their laughter swallowed in expanding silence

Pray for all of us that have ever been
As history's phases wax and wane
In the long planet seasons' flow
Pray for all who come
And all who go

Set in amber trail dust
Big black scorpion squats
Poison spike poised
Giant snaking roots of gum trees
Consumed strones of Angkor Wat
Roofless temple corridors clad
In bas-relief of battle scenes
Carved a millenium ago

Stand like rumors, like whispered tales
Golden sword of royal power stolen
Gone these 700 years
Sun will soon slide into the far end of ancient reservoir
Orange ball merging with its water-borne twin
Billow air-brushed edges of cloud
But first, it spreads itself a golden screen
Behind fractal sweep of swooping fly catchers
Silhouetted dark green trees, blue horizon
Fluid curving God-horn buffalo
Knee deep in flooded paddy
Motionless...outside time

Pray for all of us that have ever been
As history's phases wax and wane
In the long planet seasons' flow
Pray for all who come
And all who go

The rains are late this year
The sky has no more tears to shed
But Cambodia remains a disc of wet green
Bordered by bright haze
Water-filled craters
Sun streaked gleam laid in strings
Across patchwork land
500- and 1000-pound bombs
(small and medium you could say)
They march west toward the
Distant hills of Thailand
Macro version of Phnom Bat King's
Precipitous stare on ancient library walls
Spackled with the rash of AK rounds
.762 by 39 pits
You can fit a finger in

Sacred scrolls long gone
And under the sign of the 7-headed cobra
The Naga who sees in all directions
Seven million landmines lie terraced in grass,
In paddy, in bush
Best to call it a minescape now
Sally held the beggar's hand and cried
At his scarred face and absent eyes
And right leg gone from above the knee
Tears spot worn stone causeway
Laterite guardians frown or smile

Pray for all of us that have ever been
As history's phases wax and wane
In the long planet seasons' flow
Pray for all who come
And all who go


Known comments by Bruce Cockburn about this song, by date:

Editor's note: Read on Vin Scelsa's Idiot's Delight radio show on Sunday 19 September 1999. Cockburn mentioned the poem was untitled and "may or may not end up as a song," calling it "Cambodia" for now.

  • 17 December 2002 - This poem, is now a song called Postcards From Cambodia.


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