VIETNAM: Memento Mori

[Images That Haunt My Dreams]

Crimson wheels
And shadows of white crosses
On the night skies.

In the ancient city
Of Hue
The fragments of a bloodstone vase
Hide in the corner
Of the fortress.
They fear their recreator.

Mass graves
Make a topsy-turvy wall
Along the world
Of roots
That spread below the mantle
Toward the hellish core.

Above the ridge
The great iron hawks
And hummingbirds.
From hamlets
And from fields
Rise
Firestorms
Dustblooms,
And the mists
Enshroud the rubber trees.

The men in camouflage,
Who labored waist-deep
In the swamp,
The home of slithery things,
The realm of stingers,
The GI's caught within a clearing.
The radio for help, the waiting while
The killers [dressed-up farmers] close in
[Not with pitchforks] for their kill.
And then the roar of Western engines,
The Valkyries' pre-emptive strike,
Apocalypse on air and trees and ground,
The killers burned and melted
In the jellied fire.

And, too, the land, the wingless
And the winged.

Witness to the war of images,
We sat back home in living rooms
Or marched upon the streets
While Death and all his entourage
Enjoyed a feast.

A young girl screaming
All aflame,
Running toward the camera.
A traitor with a board tied
Up his back,
Dispatched in public execution.

A sunken bridge,
Wheels spin along a plank.
Blood drifts into the reeds
And under gauze
And into stumps
And throbs within the eyes
That watch the fires
And blooms and mists
Among the rubber trees.

Modern Man, the pinnacle
Of expertise and science
Now engulfed in ancient rage
And present causes:
Like a bolted circus elephant
Decked out in jewels and garb,
Trampling on his keeper
And tearing down the tent.

In India an elephant in must
Can wreck a village.

I dreamt a thousand mammoths
Made it most unpleasant
For a group of tourists
In the Khyber Pass.
One woman dropped her ivory pin
And, going back,
Was made the ritual center
Of the bellow and the roar.

In the city of Saigon
Light glares upon the gardens
And in the streets.
There is unwestern danger
In the suburbs
And the tourists wear mirrors
Between curfews.

The sibling moon,
Its airless stiff unfurled
Blue black and red
Peers down
Upon the cylces of young women:
"Drink no tea tonight
Young women of the night?"
The moon,
The hollow bell,
Rings out to lonesome beasts.

Little boy
He digs and digs
And looks behind
And digs and digs
And looks
And plants his secret.

A woman runs,
A torch upon the roadway.
A man sits,
A torch upon the city streets.

A man kneels,
A board becomes his spine.
A sudden pain and blackness
Rages in the temple.

The Ancient Giant sleeps
Who made the wheel.

Old Fisherman
Of the new tin village,
Thirsty for dollars
And thankful
For his daughter's rest.

Old Fisherman
Of the constant wars,
His quiet brain
Capitulates
To coral
Beside the estuary.

Years later, in the shadow
Of the new Millenium
I see old Walt
In Arlington
In moonlight
Tracing out each name
Upon the dark enmarbled wall.
He rises, slowly,
Stares with homage
Toward the massive men
And women figures
Cast in bronze.
Old Walt,
He looks up toward the stars
And begins the neverending
Catalogue, the litany
Of all that died
And suffered
From Man and his Machines.

And he includes
The rooted, wingless, and the winged.

Max Edward Cordonnier
[Revision of a 70's poem]