In Bangrak:

glass towers, decapitated by smog;

swallows flitting through the lattices

of long-necked cranes;

traffic lights semaphoring dumbly

down miles of roads

fuggy with the absence of cars.
At Sanam Luang:

tannoys blaring martial songs;

the stuttering of guns;

surging roars of a restive crowd —

no longer believers in mythic futures

of fish-filled streams and golden rice —

arrhythmic throbs in the breasts

of students soaked in gasoline,

clumped under the smelting sun.
Elsewhere:

in locked boardrooms,

barb-wired mansions,

cardboard shacks along railway tracks,

the Nation gathers round TVs

and, with shock-wide eyes,

watch gilded generals

and God-King stills,

and rumour’s inexorable advance

toward torture, death.
In Bangrak:

the migrant swallows

unhitch swatches of silence

from the cranes,

lay them across the city,

the students, bound and broken now,

slumped semaphores on grass.