Thinking back
it’s been centuries now
I am a stone sculptor of Angkor
having practiced my art for a decade
I was chosen to sculpt for the new city
the most venerated Buddha in the world
it took a full half year
to polish all the stone surfaces
painstakingly sketching out the contours
starting from the Buddha’s placid toes
that more than two millennia ago
had just been washed in the river
shaping the stone with chisel, axe, mallet, auger
up to the shoulders where the petals of flowery rains would
    come to rest
to the hands that turn the great Wheel of the Law
to the garment with myriad creases like rivulets
falling naturally into carefree folds
slowly chiseling all the way up to
the Buddha’s visage

What should the face be like
that reads destiny and the cycles of life and death?
What should that knowing countenance
of unbounded pity be like?
How should the austere face
of the majestic teacher of heaven and man be?
How wide open should the eyes be that view the entire
    world?
Should a smile steal from the corners of his eyes
or should they be serious and solemn?
The sutras say that the Buddha has thirty-two guises
And eighty kinds of benevolence
I have meditated from dawn to dusk
imagining my eye fixated on my nose and my nose on my
    heart
but have come up with nothing at all
it is as though my heart is on fire
I am at a loss
I walk madly through the city at a loose end

Our powerful enemy, Siam, has for years
been raging against us like a forest fire
leaving behind countless dead and wounded
I, a sculptor, was also drafted
to enter their ranks
the night before I left
I saw a refugee child
I carved a Buddha’s face in his image
as the fog began to lift, the sun shone through for an instant
I saw a glimmer
shoot from the Buddha’s eye
I wondered whether it was a dewdrop or a tear

After months of conflict
Siam made the earth thunder
with a phalanx of armored elephants
I pierced many people through with a spear
their moaning, fear-stricken faces
often appeared in my short bouts of slumber
in the afternoons during lulls in the fighting
I washed my blood-stained face clean
in the river
shed my weighty helmet and armor
as though freeing myself from
sin and wrongdoing
heavy as Mount Sumeru

And you
just happened to be a general from Siam
astride your mount, with a moon-round face
earlobes reaching to your shoulders
in the bloody pre-dawn battle
in my exhausted illusion
I thought it was the face of the Buddha
so I fixed my sights on you
without moving a finger
among the legions of troops and horses
you drew your bow to its tautest
an arrow pierced through my armor
entering my heart

I could finally flee this battle
feeling as though I had let go of an onerous burden
my spirit was as wispy smoke, as vaporizing drops of dew
the cries to charge and kill fell dead silent
you owed me a debt,...