Before I knew your name,
I knew your shape— limbed like wild lightning
scorching the sky with green, your thick trunk
wrapped in saffron and satin—
the soldier-boys from our house
would climb you, fearless,
while I looked on, feet clawing the earth below.
I knew you then as Challenge
and as Giant, your black stump charred
my arms and hands
and I could not grip the needled bark
and pull my body up to crown myself
a little king. I could do nothing but fall
as you stood, inscrutable and silent.
I knew you next as Chankiri, as Wound
and I cried when I learned of you,
old wet leaves folded in the rain,
each bracelet worn, a loop of silence.
How could the world hold you?
Brimmed with ache and overflowed,
your roots vaster than our borders and more slow.
My grandfather, soldier, rough gardener,
he thought to change his name,
wanted to cut that leaf from stem,
from gunshot, scream, and bursting air,
to unthread it from that deep ravine
of leaves and names. He knew your name,
your fruit, as Karma.
Before I knew my name, it was taken.
Traded to a monk, the one he gave back
had a strange weight. I could not say it right,
I could not speak. Each syllable,
awkward, drummed in my throat,
the sound, the seed fumbled out
—I knew you last as myself, as Violence.
–
Polchate (Jam) Kraprayoon is a Bangkok native and works for an intergovernmental agency in Tokyo. He received a master’s from the University of Oxford and a bachelor’s at the LSE. His work has been featured in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Harbor Review, Meniscus, Portland Review, and Split Rock Review.