Throckmorton's troops are already out of it -- even the segregated
jibaro 65th Infantry plods towards Chosin Reservoir
and Lin Piao, the snow-covered Taebek Mountains,
where a bear first gave birth to humans,
boot-rot eating their feet away, houseboys and refugee girls
as sex toys in tow, to undermine bridges along the Yalu
and prepare for the bombing of Manchuria.
Here--closer to the DMZ, an iron triangle of Chinese volunteers,
below a twisted shelf-like road where the largest gingko
in the world glints gold -- Marines lead NKPA prisoners
through terraced rice fields, half-tracks smouldering, a hole
where a hamlet was, to the dungeons of the island of Koje-Do.
Late dusk comes, fireflies, new moon, someone gestures
back to where a single stork wades in a dry creek bed,
the only trickle an ichorous bleeding of the gods.
In caves on a finger of a numbered hill, a munsin conjuress
calls up spirits from rocks and trees, the flower soldiers
of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, to celebrate the hundredth day
in a child's life, when the first photo is to be taken.
But there's no film in the village--no village left at all--
so the chances of capturing her smile are next to nothing.

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