A Cup of Fine Tea: Greg Santos’s “Siem Reap, Cambodia”

Greg Santos’s “Siem Reap, Cambodia” [Read the poem here]
(First published in Issue #10 of Cha)

–This post is written by Tammy Ho.

Greg Santos’s poem “Siem Reap, Cambodia” opens with a close third-person description of a girl leaving her home city: ‘Before stepping into a taxi / a young girl struggles to take the city with her’ (L1-L2). The word ‘struggles’ reveals that the girl is reluctant to depart and is trying to capture as much of ‘the city she will no longer call home’ (L9) as possible.

What the young girl is trying to take in is vividly described in the second stanza; it provides the reader with a portrayal of Siem Reap which works on many of our senses: ‘Warm, sticky air’ (touch), ‘scent of fragrant rice’, ‘pungent odor of dry fish’ (smell), ‘raw flesh hung on butchers’ hooks’ (sight), ‘squawking of chickens’, ‘crescendo of rickshaws, scooters, bicycles’ (hearing).

Yet, there is no time for the girl to carefully catalogue everything and her memory of the city will ultimately be incomplete. Even as she ‘speeds away’, the city is already beginning to recede ‘into memory’ (L10). The girl may already be realising that we can only take snippets of our past with us, never the whole record. There is also a sense in this description of the city’s slipping into memory that, for the girl, one can never go back home.

But it is not only her old life that is disappearing, the country as a whole is undergoing metamorphosis. As she travels through ‘the rolling countryside’ (L11), we see that it is now empty, no longer ‘dotted by women tending to the paddies’ (L11) or ‘children splashing among water buffalo’ (L13). These previously common scenes are now a thing of the past. The lines pointedly suggest that like the young girl, the women and children too are also affected, possibly by the same forces that have driven her from the city.

What these forces are is revealed in the evocative phrases which come next: ‘echoes of distant missiles’ (L14) and ‘murders of crows’ that ‘dive into reddened fields’ (L15). The image of crows diving into blood-soaked fields is particularly effective as it echoes the motion and destruction of missiles landing. Although we are never explicitly told what these events are, one can safely assume that they are describing Cambodia’s recent troubled history, either the civil war or the period under the Khmer Rouge. In some sense, it does not matter. Historical forces act upon common people like the girl. No matter who is responsible for the missiles, the effect is the same: she must flee her home.

Next, the poem switches perspective slightly and we see that there are witnesses to the girl’s flight. The faces of Angkor ‘watch sadly’ (L16) as ‘another one of their children flees’ (L18). But these stony visages not only scrutinise the young girl, but also observe the wider events in action as they see ‘their city’ crumble (L17)–’their city’ here referring to both the ancient and slowly decaying city of Angkor (a Sanskrit word which itself means ‘city’) and the more quickly deteriorating Siem Reap. There is a nice contrast of historic times here: the long history of the ruins from a once great empire and the rapid disintegration of modern Cambodia.

Yet, it is the final lines which reveal the true witness to the events described: the speaker of the poem is in fact the young girl’s unborn child. In other words, the poem has been told from the perspective of a foetus, a very close third-person narrator indeed. It is only when the reader realises the speaker’s true identity that the subtle foreshadowing that has been occurring throughout the poem becomes evident. For example, in the second stanza, note the description of Siem Reap as ‘warm’, ‘sticky’, ‘comforting’, ‘pungent’ and ‘raw’, all of which suggest a womb. And as the stanza progresses towards ‘squawking’, then a ‘crescendo’, it is almost as if the young mother herself is being born, forever ejected from the womb of Siem Reap. Likewise, the women and children who have disappeared from the paddies in the third stanza suggest that it is not only the the young mother who is fleeing but also her child.

With the shocking revelation that the speaker is an unborn child,¹ the reader might be left with a sense that both the mother and child will survive. The image of a baby is almost always a metaphor for new beginnings and new lives. And if not read closely, the poem may seem as if it is being narrated from a point in the future looking back. However, this is an illusion as the foetus is in fact using the present tense to tell us current events instead of recalling the story from a safe distance. The mother and child may survive but they may equally end up being killed directly after the poem ends.

However, I am inclined towards the happy ending. The words ‘gently growing’ in the final line do provide a sense of a new start. Or, maybe I just want to hope that even as another one of Angkor’s children flees, it is to a better place.
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¹Margaret Atwood’s “This Is a Photograph of Me” also employs an unusual speaker. Do you know other poems that use interesting speakers? Tell us in a comment.
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Greg Santos [website], author of TWEET TWEET TWEET (Corrupt Press, 2011), is a poet originally from Montreal. He is the poetry editor of pax americana and his debut poetry collection The Emperor’s Sofa (DC Books, 2010) was longlisted for the ReLit Awards. Santos lives in New Haven, Connecticut with his wife and daughter. 

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