Angkor Wat

Sept 21 2018

The beauty of the old barn

was not its wide weathered planks

cut from the tall trees

that are now mostly gone.

Not the dusty light

shafting through the cracks

in its vast dim interior,

nor the iron implements

with their glorious patina of rust

scattered on its soft dirt floor.

No, it was the muscular trees

grunting-up through the roof,

persistent shrubs

like a garland of green

constricting its walls.

The waist-high grass, going to seed

and lapping at its foundations.

The old building, so graceful in decline

as it slumped back to earth

with a kind of louche beauty,

returning to the soil

subsumed in the land.

Like a lost Mayan city

swamped by feverish jungle.

Or Angkor Wat,

its stagnant moats

with their murky algal bloom,

mossy stone, verdant green on grey.

Its stately courtyards

over-run

by great tropical hardwoods.

How much more beautiful

is the work of man

as nature reclaims it,

so pathetic in its transience

and awesome in its grace.

Like a sun-dried ancient, at peace with his fate,

whose paper-thin skin

is almost translucent

and whose brittle bones have shrunk,

peering out

through rheumy eyes

with world-weary wisdom.

Such an odd origin story to this poem.

In the latest Atlantic (October 2018), in the recurring feature called The Big Question, they called out for nominations for The Eighth Wonder of the World. The submissions are both solicited by the editors and open to the reading public. This one was first in the list:

Vanessa Hua, author, A River of Stars

Angkor Wat is where my husband proposed to me at dawn, the sky rosy and golden over the spires reflected in the moat. With its stunning bas-reliefs and crumbling temples in eternal battle with banyan trees, the temple complex inspires awe and contemplation of the sweep of history and the atrocities of war.

My response to this description was immediate and evocative. It recalled a persistent theme of mine, man vs nature: that is, our presumption of control and conceit of posterity. For some reason I pictured an old falling-down barn and the encroachment of the natural landscape. This poem was the result, and pretty much wrote itself. As I said to one of my first readers, “pretty much ...passing through my hand as if I were taking dictation.”

I should note the more literal and less vernacular use of “awesome”: an over-used and debased word that I'm pleased to reclaim. I was also gratified to find a use for one of my favourite words, “louche”. I like its connotation of slightly disrespectful seediness and of letting oneself go. I discern a kind of sexual energy in its implication of looseness and surrender.