WAT PHRA THAT DOI KHAM

From the ring-roads it was invisible,

Lost in Chiang Mai’s monsoonal green

In a season that flattered the hills

And made them seem pristine.

Suddenly we saw more than steep bluffs —

The cliff was ablaze with strafes of light,

As if flames were scorching the tree tops,

And distant gold plate seemed set to ignite.

We stopped to buy white garlands

From vendors waiting in the shade,

Before the road hair-pin-bended

Its way to the heart of a sacred glade.

The place was the home of dragons rampant and snakes

Coiled before a reclining idol — a countenance so serene

That I almost understood the pilgrims’ trust

In merit gleaned from offerings seen and faith unseen.

THE BRIDGE

All that remains is a memory of a bridge,

Spanning a river that, in its prehistory,

Churned through cliff-sided valleys

And then flooded ample plains, now stretched out

Beside rolling hills, now backdropped by blue mountains,

And left the clammy slime crammed with cradles of life.

When the ‘Oxbra’ was first named and tamed

The colony was fed and the famine was finished.

Forsaken refugees, sent to a land they did not know

By governments that, it must be said,

Would surely have preferred them dead,

Turned the lowlands into fields of fruitful triumphs —

Hard labour of outcasts,

Their sullied hearts washed clean on the muddy river flats.

New wealth mustered free men,

Keen to make super-profits from the land —

A certainty once the early work was done.

First nations were vanquished,

Convict settlers’ farms were looted,

As the shrines of capital were built

By the raiders and the traders,

The merchants and their confidants —

Men unaware of their own guilt,

Indemnified against risk and chance.

If you go there you can watch the pageants —

New generations stroll on mean pavements

Laid recklessly along the falsified embankments,

Unwittingly untutored by tangible remembrance.

If we, who will soon be out of time,

Try to tell them about a lawful crime —

A monument’s misappropriation —

Will they will hear a memory of a bridge?

The photograph was taken by Paul Caleo and published on Facebook in 2021.  It shows the old Windsor bridge in the final stages of its demolition.