And the Time Is: Poems, 1958-2013

Ballad of a Returnee

139 Ballad of a Returnee He knew he was older and taller. He saw that the towns were the same. What made them seem suddenly smaller? What made him feel somehow to blame for all that was done to a village to save a surrounded platoon? The huts were just booty to pillage on a hillscape as spare as the moon. A man with one leg saw him walking and offered him tea on a mat. They spent the whole afternoon talking while his wife cooked the head of a cat. It wasn’t his squad he remembered. It wasn’t the sergeant at Hue who found his lieutenant dismembered and buried him there where he lay. What troubled him most were the places that once were just places to fight. He thought of the nightfighters’ faces all blackened to blend with the night. The whores in their teens were forgotten and gone were their overnight dates, and grown were the idly begotten whose fathers were back in the States. He never regretted returning. At least he had lessened his dread. 140 But the toll that it took for the learning was 58,000 dead. He walked in a daze near the water. He sat all alone on the shore like a man making peace with the slaughter, though the price for this peace was war. ...