The Face of the Buddha

( This poem is about the ' Killing Fields' of Cambodia, 1975-79, where as many as 2 million people were murdered by the communist Khmer Rouge. I taught in Phnom-Penh from '73-74, and never met a people I liked more.) They haunt me still, the brown children laughing, always laughing, the women voluptuous, languid, their movement almost an invitation.... Even the traffic policeman: crisp, clean, proud in uniform, moving with ballerina grace as hordes of cyclos and mopeds and the occasional automobile pirouette endlessly about him, impatient bees made quiescent by surreal beauty of white-gloved arms cutting through thick tropical air.... Everywhere was grace, gentleness: temples incandescent at dawn, with ant trails of orange-robed monks cradling their pot-belly begging bowls, the patient women standing by the road to lump rice into the begging bowls, the monks always staring blankly ahead as the women bowed low in reverence, grateful their gift of life was taken.... And oh, how wondrous it was: an accident in the street, yet no anger, no bile--forgiveness, felt before thought, thought before uttered.... How could such a people murder? No, not murder-- slaughter! Their mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, teachers, priests, friends and children too. Change temples of peace into charnel-houses? Schools of knowledge into abattoirs? They photographed every butchered lamb, like the devil's children on holiday, and decorated the classroom walls, a show-and-tell of horror and despair. Why? Why?-- Why such pain on such a gentle people? Why did God hide His face while the world turned its back? Forty, forty, forty years and still... still they haunt me.