POW/MIAs

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Apr 27 09:55:36 PDT 2001


W.D. Ehrhart served as a marine in Vietnam and was wounded after Tet in the battle to retake Hue. He has published several volumes of poetry. The following is from _Just for Laughs_. (He has also edited a volume of poems of the Vietnam War, and his other books include _Going Back: An Ex-Marine Returns to Vietnam_.

"POW/MIA"

I. In the jungle of years,

lost voices are calling. Long

are the memories,

bitterly long the waiting,

and the names of the missing and dead

wander

disembodied

through a green tangle

of rumors and lies,

gliding like shadows among vines.

II. Somewhere, the rumors go,

men still live in jungle prisons.

Somewhere in Hanoi, the true believers

know,

the bodies of four hundred servicemen

lie on slabs of cold

communist hate.

III. Mothers, fathers,

wives and lovers,

sons and daughters,

touch your empty fingers to your lips

and rejoice

in your sacrifice and pain:

your loved ones' cause

was noble,

says the state.

IV. In March of 1985, the wreckage

of a plane was found in Laos.

Little remained of the dead:

rings, bone chips, burned

bits of leather and cloth;

for thirteen families,

twenty years of hope

and rumors

turned acid on the soul

by a single chance discovery.

V. Our enemies are legion,

says the state;

let bugles blare

and bang the drum slowly,

bang the drum.

VI. God forgive me, but I've seen

that triple-canopied green

nightmare of a jungle

where a man in a plane could go down

unseen, and never be found

by anyone.

Not ever.

There are facts,

and there are facts;

when the first missing man

walks alive out of that green tangle

of rumors and lies,

I shall lie

down silent as a jungle shadow,

and dream the sound of insects

gnawing bones.



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