Bend In The River
Kevin Bowen is the director of the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His most recent collections are Eight True Maps of the West and Early Zen Poems from Vietnam. Kevin Bowen will be one of the readers at Peacework's Pat Farren Lecture honoring Denise Levertov on October 24, 2007.
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Late afternoon sun,
mountains,
miles of wet fields,
an illusion of mirrors.
The Bang tree's first leaves just turning yellow.
Tourists eat pommes frites by the bridge
where a thousand died.
Gray boats slip past
on their way to market,
temple,
white sands of a cemetery.
Darkness crawls up,
down river,
lamps lit to draw fish,
starred nets dropping.
Let us in, let us in, the dead call.
Their hands reach up.
Their hands reach up.
