Cambodia Travel Series - Every Fallen Stone An Ache To The Heart Poem by john tiong chunghoo

Call it a curse, call the thousand years a curse
these temples were made to last ten thousand years
but they now lie like a dream shattered
walls crumbled, even the roots of trees like pythons,
have wound their way into the stone structures
holding them tightly but in fact breaking them apart

the trees now stand majestic as if celebrating the fact
that they had the temples down to its foundations

Call me Jayarvarman IV, or even better still
King Suryavarman (Sun Shield) II
the builders of most of the wonders of Angkor
and in fact, to feel what i feel, just call me
a heart that has been trampled into a million pieces
like what you would see at many of Angkor ruins

they stand like exact curses of what
the once glorious god kings would
have percevied or feared them to become
the symbols of their power tore to mere desolate rubble

the coldness of each stone now freezes
one the fashion of a virgin's loneliness
a virgin still in the emotional throes of
losing her childhood love to another woman

and please do not even laugh here
for the echoes that richocet back are
even more unbearable -
they storm at a heart as if it has been
emptied of all its ambitions
a disillusioned soul in the bleakness
of the worst rain

the Bayon, the king still looks into the sky
into so many ways, directions
reminiscent of his great days

a disconsolate longing
permeates the evening winds
and the dusk light throws a a melancholic
silhouette over the erroded flooring
evoking a futile longing to call back the old days
to distil the curse of time and nature's wrath

every visitor who visits the Angkor
cannot help but be possessed by the
disillusioned souls of these great kings
and sighs; 'It was such a great great
kingdom then. Every fallen stone
has to be an ache to the great heart
of those god kings, even now.'