The frail Ba Tu plays the traditional

Don Ca Tai Tu and floods the Mekong,

its currents rising like mountain cloud.

The ruins of Angkor dance around drums.

As dusk falls, monks send

letters of nirvana to lost cities—

Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar,

where doctors are bold bartenders,

artemisinin is the high,

where the sun waits for the Laos lass

to sift rice in the morning light, as

her lover serenades her with harvest songs.

The floating market sings along, as

the fishermen paddle their boats

away from the falciparum strains.

The rain descends like invading armies,

as Nan murals ask for bed nets

along the Greater Mekong.

Malarial cases make an endemic scene,

as the world fights

resistance of artemisinin.

• Tags: Free to read, Poetry, Raghavendra Madhu