Bruce Cockburn Postcards From Cambodia Lyrics

Postcards From Cambodia Lyrics

Abe Lincoln once turned to somebody and said:

Do you ever find yourself
talking with the dead? 



There are three tiny deaths heads carved
out of mammoth tusk 

on the ledge in my bathroom.

They grin at me
in the morning when Im taking a leak,

but they say very little. 



Outside Phnom Penh theres a tower, glass-pannelled,

maybe ten
meters high, 

filled with skulls from the killing fields.

Most of
them lack the lower jaw

so they dont exactly grin,

but they
whisper, as if from a great distance,

of pain, and of pain left far
behind 



Eighteen thousand empty eyeholes peering out at the four
directions 



Electric fly buzz  green moist breeze 

Bonecoloured Brahma bull grazes wet eyed, (gazes??)

hobbled in hollow
of mass grave

In the neighbouring field a small herd

of young boys
plays soccer,

their laughter swallowed in expanding silence. 



This is too big for anger,

its too big for blame.

We stumble
through history so

humanly lame 

So I bow down my head 

Say a
prayer for us all

That we dont fear the spirit

when it comes to call




Sun will soon slide down into the far end of the ancient
reservoir.

Orange ball merging with its water-borne twin

below
airbrushed edges of cloud.

But first it spreads itself,

a golden
scrim behind fractal sweep of swooping flycatchers.

Silhouetted dark
green trees,

Blue horizon. 



The rains are late this year.

The sky has no more tears to shed.

But from the air Cambodia remains

a disc of wet green, bordered by bright haze.

Water-filled bomb craters
 sunstreak gleam 

stitched in strings across patchwork land

march
west toward the far hills of Thailand.

Macro analog of Angkor Wats temple
walls