Allied with the Bees
These people have been living in these areas for all their life but they have never heard or experienced something like this before. Bees and honey are part of their life; they and their ancestors have traded honey for salt, clothes, and other goods for hundreds of years.
– Letter to the Editor by S. Yang, Long Beach, April 6, 1984
Tell them, child, we have hiked
These hills without shoes, long
Enough to hunt alongside the bees,
Memorizing the bend, pulse
Of their voices when they
Go dream inside the trees.
We have been crowned with
Syrup of their toils so that our
Syntax might awaken to know
Its full range, compassed to
The North, pristine as a nomadic
Butterfly. Tell them, daughter,
We watched as they buried their
Queen, folding her into cashmere
Of her wings before swarming
The body toward a fire of stars.
And for days, the forest keened
A shadow lullaby. And for nights,
We listened for the bees only
To uncover the hurried hush of our
Own stranded feet, falling forgotten
As collateral beings. Tell them,
Me ntxhais, we are not misled in
Our anguish, what happened
To the bees also happened to us.
A Daub of Tree Swallows as Aerial Ash
Most serious charge, however, relates to report of massacre committed on May 15, 1985, in which “approximately 5,000 civilians were ordered into a cave at U.G. 332 820 and were ‘gassed.’ ” These civilians reportedly were captured “at U.G. 332 803” on May 14, following a May 13 battle in which resistance fighters suffered heavy casualties at hands of Vietnamese and Pathet Lao soldiers… Some 25 intended victims reportedly escaped being driven into cave… Our efforts to date do not enable us to confirm any details of incident.
– Cable from the U.S. Embassy, Bangkok, to the Secretary of State, September 3, 1985
All over threnodies
of dissected water
Inside this cavern of scars
Had the barn
owl been more accepting
to tell
Had your sonatas petaled
from below
the walls of this
resounding abyss
Questioning what yielded
in your
conduit of husk
they cannot be sure of
details in preference
to dismiss in fear
of the knives
sewn into
their bones
They offer no place
for you but here is a place
to rest your
evening birdsong
Alongside
a river of windows
under a trellis of bells
to nourish
in silk leaves and a
harvest of wild pears