W.D. Ehrhart
W.D. Ehrhart, an ex Marine Sergeant, earned the Purple Heart Medal and two Presidential Unit Citations. He is the author of more than twelve books of poetry, several collections of essays, and edited three anthologies. He is also the recipient of several grants and awards for his work. W.D. Ehrhart was and is a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
A RELATIVE THING
We are the ones you sent to fight a war
you didn't know a thing about.It didn't take us long to realize
the only land that we controlled
was covered by the bottoms of our boots.When the newsmen said that naval ships
had shelled a VC staging point,
we saw a breastless woman
and her stillborn child.We laughed at old men stumbling
in the dust in frenzied terror
to avoid our three-ton trucks.We fought outnumbered in Hue City
while ARVN soldiers looted bodies
in the safety of the rear.
The cookies from the wives of Local 104
did not soften our awareness.We have seen the pacified supporters
of the Saigon government
sitting in their jampacked cardboard towns,
their wasted hands placed limply in their laps,
their empty bellies waiting for the rice
some district chief has sold
for profit to the Vietcong.We have been Democracy on Zippo raids,
burning houses to the ground,
driving eager amtracs through new-sown fieldsWe are the ones who have to live
with the memory that we were the instruments
of your pigeon-breasted fantasies.
We are inextricable accomplices
in this travesty of dreams:
but we are not alone.We are the ones you sent to fight a war
you did not know a thing about--
those of us that lived
have tried to tell you what went wrong.
Now you think you do not have to listen.Just because we will not fit
into the uniforms of photographs
of you at twenty-one
does not mean you can disown us.We are your sons, America,
and you cannot change that.
When you awake,
we will still be here.
TO THOSE WHO HAVE GONE HOME TIRED
After the streets fall silent
After the bruises and the tear-gassed eyes are healed
After the concensus has returned
After the memories of Kent and My Lai and Hiroshima
lose their power
and the connections with each other
and the sweaters labeled Made in Taiwan
After the last American dies in Canada
and the last Korean in prison
and the last Indian at Pine Ridge
After the last whale is emptied from its skin
and the last drop of blood refined by Exxon
After the last iron door clangs shut
behind the last conscience
and the last loaf of bread is hammered into bullets
and the bullets
scattered among the hungry
What answers will you find
What armor will protect you
when your children ask you
Why?
THE INVASION OF GRENADA
I didn't want a monument,
not even one as sober as that
vast black wall of broken lives.
I didn't want a road beside the Delaware
River with a sign proclaiming:
"Vietnam Veterans Memorial Highway."What I wanted was a simple recognition
of the limits of our power as a nation
to inflict our will on others.
What I wanted was an understanding
that the world is neither black-and-white
nor ours.
What I wanted was an end to monuments.But no one
ever asked me what I wanted.
LETTER
to a north Vietnamese soldier whose life crossed paths with mine in Hue City, February 5th, 1968
Thought you killed me
with that rocket? Well, you nearly did:
splattered walls and splintered air,
knocked me cold and full of holes,
and brought the roof down on my head.But I lived,
long enough to wonder often
how you missed; long enough
to wish too many times
you hadn't.What's it like back there?
It's all behind us here;
and after all those years of possibility,
things are back to normal.
We just had a special birthday,
and we've found again our inspiration
by recalling where we came from
and forgetting where we've been.
Oh, we're still haggling over pieces
of the lives sticking out
beyond the margins of our latest
history books--but no one haggles
with the authors.Do better than that
you cockeyed gunner with the brass
to send me back alive among a people
I can never feel
at ease with anymore:
remember where you've been, and why.
And then build houses;
build villages,dikes and schools, songs
and children in that green land
I blackened with my shadow
and the shadow of my flag.
Remember Ho Chi Minh
was a poet: please,
do not let it all come down
to nothing.
MIDNIGHT AT THE VIETNAM VETERANS MEMORIAL
Fifty-eight thousand American dead
average age: nineteen years, six months.
Get a driver's license,
graduate from high school,
die.
All that's left of them
we've turned to stone.
What they never got to be
grows dimmer by the year.But in the moon's dim light
when no one's here,
the names rise up, step down
and start the long procession home
to what they left undone,
to what they loved, to anywhere
that's not this silent
wall of kids, this
smell of rotting dreams.