ONE AT PLAY IN THE FIELDS OF by KAREN SWENSON

One came home from forced labor to
collapsed bamboo, leaf rubble of
his village, followed in grief a thread
of happy memory to the field
where, with rice baskets full beneath
silken slaps of Buddhist pennants,
the village picnicked. One found a stench,
putrescent stews of naked women
with their babes in open pits. Now
this one's concierge of the bone tower.

Like Genghis Khan's or Tamerlane's
skull towers on the wind-raw plains
of Asia, but cooped up in glass,
this is a library of shelved
brainboxes which look out blind to
all compass points for others of their
own kind. I photograph girls labeled
prepubescent, but am tugged to
the next shelf, labeled "Europeans,"
as one nods condolences.

But eyeless, lipless, brought down to bone,
I cannot mourn mine separately
since we are every one the dead
as we are every one the killers.
The @3longan@1 tree, rummaging
for bloom and fruit in blood-brewed earth
beneath the pits, one day will shade
picnics, banners, children scratching
games in this dust, at play in
the fields of where we all are one.

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

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