This is not my village

As I come

To tread your dust

Walking as though fixated

Returning as though a hero

On my pilgrimage of peace

Memories and anguish

I tell them in my mind

This is yours

Left hardly better than before

I have no sense of place

This is not my village

Just because it all looks familiar

Just because the children

All run into the street

Group themselves for photographs

Give me their address

Let it be yours

Let me give it back

With my shattered conscience

This is not my village

These are not my people

Lost in dust

Just because this old man

Can talk my language

A little ......and yes

He remembers Kevin

From Sydney not known to me

And next month

Those who came after

Will return - perhaps to gloat

Slap one another

On the back

This is not my village

For up this dusty track

Young women came

To feed on wasted semen

And be forgotten

Now all the beer bottles

Mamasans and bars

Are gone

This place is where it was

Before- long ago I came

This could never be my village

This is not my village

This is not where my

Placenta is buried

Not where the spirits

Of my ancestors dwell

The right to own this land

Was never granted me

I should neither bring

Nor take

Soldiers are tourists with guns

Tourists are invaders with cameras

This is not my village

This could never be mine

These are not my people

Though I am their brother

Nothing could give me the right

To remove them

To another place

To extinguish their houses

From the face of the earth

To set them wandering

In search of roots that cannot be

A new village cannot be their village

New land has no ancestors

This is not my village

Dedicated to the villagers of Ban Kok Talat where the airstrip was built, ten kilometres from Leong Nok Tha, revisited in January, 1993.   This poem has been published in several literary journals.