There‟s a Lao boy who needs poems
To win over the lovely sao Lao down
His street before the sun
Is gone
And night changes her outfit
To the shade of a slinky summer moon.
The bookstores there can feed him
The old standbys,
But she knows
The warbling of the dead
When she hears it,
So that‟s not going to get anyone
Any further
Than a closed door the color of lonely.
He needs words to tell her:
Every road in his life leads only to her.
Every hair on her head is a monument
To a beautiful nation, and every inch
Of her perfect skin is a song that ends in love.
He needs ways to praise the marvels that are
Her hands, her arms, her every limb
That beckons him: Explore
The great jewel of her bright life,
A fierce dancing fire alive to his touch.
He wants to feel his breath with hers near
The nocturnal edge of eternity and its vast oceans,
So pure and feminine against his continents of hope.
Slipping rhythmically between the great arcs and curves of
Her magnificent Laotian body, he needs words
Profound, deep, relentless as the memory of old countries
Where this must have been so much easier to say
Than today.
But where is he going to find these words,
If no one will write them?
From Tanon Sai Jai, 2009
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