‘tok long kheu fon’
or
Rain
by Jon Raymont Jost
“Our lives became like those of animals
desperately trying to escape their hunters.”
—a refugee from U.S. bombings on the Plain of Jars
We ran as it fell on the jarred plain
The red, red dirt like a plowed field turned
To receive an angry thunderstorm
And the vessels broke and the fires burned
As the planes poured down their relentless rain
The strength that those in the blessed lands
In pursuit of life and happiness use—
We spent that strength digging hiding holes
While yet blood from the fresh-slain bodies oozed
Into earth that we tore up with frantic hands
And I saw my son run in his thin white shirt
And my little girl’s dress was a waving rag
That marked for the pilot an aiming point
And I saw on his shoulder the spangled flag
As their bodies were mangled with metal and dirt
We hid under a tattered, once-white parasol
Afraid of the sun and the Christians’ guns
While they strafed and mowed our children down
And our leaders kept sacrificing our sons
For our enemies’ enemy’s distant goal
We are locked in our land, beaten down like that field
Still bombed from below by buried steel balls
While our organs and daughters are sold in the stalls
Too fearful to speak—there are ears in the walls—
Does anyone hear? Can these wounds be healed?
J.R. Jost is a husband, father, linguist, enthusiast of coffee and smoking (meat, not leaves), secretly a singer-songwriter, and openly a philologist in its etymological sense: a lover of language and of words.
Photography by Kenneth Godoy