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Viet Nam War Memorial
Gaunt with grief:
Motionless:
Stilled, Silenced:
Cold December day:
Grey and bleak.
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I could not move:
Stunned:
Frozen in Time:
Unbelieving:
Damn it all!
Damn!
It!
All! |
It was not my war
don’t you know?
They were not my people
don’t you see?
Do I protest too much?
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Name engraved black marble slabs
rising from the earth
sear into my soul.
Burning deep to feel the pain,
of so many deaths, such futility.
Ball of fire flames my chest,
chills the marrow of my bones.
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Subterranean edifice
hurts me awake,
transforms deep memories
for my own kind.
Fellow humans. |
Americans,
Vietnamese,
All peoples
caught in a sinister web
of dark and deadly shadows
that lurk in all of us:
Hate, Greed and Power.
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I circle the profanity of war,
nerve center of our world.
Grimly aware thought:
Our world must be transformed:
Our world must be changed:
Renewed:
Now! |
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And we must do it.
Transforming ourselves
then others in swift urgency.
Else the memoirs
of our civilization
are no more than
monuments To The Dead. |
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Our Dead:
Yours
And
Mine. |
December 7, 1985
Vietnam War Memorial
Washington, D.C.
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