Poem for Tê´t

Lang Co village, Vietnam

Lunar New Year, 31/1/1995

This is the poem

that will save my life

this is the line that will cure me

this word, this, the word word the one

this     breath       the one I am

The Well by the Trail to My An

Binh Dinh Province, 1970

I think of you

papa-san, grandfather,

Ông,

standing at your open well

there you are, smiling host

to a squad of well-armed foreigners, pulling up

red Folger’s coffee cans of cool sweet water

dousing bowed teenaged heads

eight young men this time, huge, all hairy

like dogs, bearing strange black rifles

(they will not go away) wearing only

boots and floppy war-green undershorts

careless youth from a rich world, blind

to soap water spilling back down the well

your task of diplomacy to keep the soap out

without getting shot

for once

I could see clearly what you thought

as I watched you grin and nod non-stop

like an imbecile, disappearing in that grin

into a sea of caricature papa-sans

I saw something I knew in your eyes

I saw you calling on the god

of get me out of this

I saw in you myself

desperate

to preserve the healthful water

From the Online Exclusives for the Fall 2007 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 24, No. 1)

Originally published in Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, (Koa Books, 2006) and What Book!? (Parallax Press, 1998). Reprinted by permission.