Poetry, Fiction, and Drama


Poetry

Featured Highlights >> Poetry, Fiction, and Drama >> Poetry
Search Tips



Julius Lester

Insert abstract here....




FULL TEXT


Mud In Vietnam
by Julius Lester


Vietnam is
muddy
backroads
through hamlets that
had
no roads
(not even for ox-cart)
in the time of the French,
when thatched huts were
scattered through
fields
that were deserts in dry season, lakes where no fish swam in rainy season.
Vietnam is
muddy
backroads
between the
canals
and
the
rice-fields
that are
green
green
green
a
gentle
undulating
green
(where there are no 15 foot deep bomb craters)
that will
grow into a
playful
yellow
at harvest time.

Vietnam is
muddy
backroads
that
splatter the clothes
as
Army trucks
hurry beneath the
ever-threatening sky
where a distant cloud may be F 105's
("We have done nothing to the Americans")
and
a life is
no more
than that of a
rice kernel
falling from a peasant's basket into
the mud
and
being stepped on.

The
mud
of
Vietnam
is
woman-thigh
deep
with backs bent,
for muddiness is next to Godliness,
woman-thigh deep
in the fields of
Hung Yen Province
carving slabs of
mud that will
be cut to
brick-size and
baked in kilns--
woman-thigh high
in water,
feet
deep
in
the
mud,
planting rice--
(with a quick
turn of the wrist
green stalks
are thrust in to the mud);
woman-thigh high
midst the delicate rice
hair (tied loosely
at the back of the head)
falling below the
hips
and
brushing the tops
of the
green
rice stalks.

Their
woman-ness
seems to grow from
the
mud
of
Vietnam
where they stand,
woman-thigh high
woman-thigh deep.

I would like
to make love

woman-thigh high
woman-thigh deep
in
the
mud
of
Vietnam.

The girl, quan dai den rolled
Above their knees, left the fields,
Their wet legs glistened like the
Barrels of the rifles on their backs.





lxvxii
by Julius Lester


If there were not a war,
I would smile at the acne-blemished
Kids with rifles on their backs.
(March 24, 1967)


Return to list

Send feedback or questions to kief@aavw.org
Kief Schladweiler
Librarian, NYC


Free Speech Online Blue Ribbon Campaign