Author's Note: I thought this poem would be instructive to younger readers as to Vietnam troop morale in 1971 and maybe provoke them to research the factual and historical significance of the American government supplying its own troops with high grade heroin in order to prevent mass mutiny and desertion.

SURVIVORS

(Vietnam, 1971)

In Cam Ranh Bay they re-opened a hospital one day.
The place had been closed for Nixon's withdrawal,
but they found a dis-ease that had smitten the ranks
of the thousands of lucky ones about to go home.

The newspapers termed the proportions widespread;
and we all laughed as we nodded-out on the bunkers.
The headlines said it was twenty percent -
about as low as the body counts were too high I suppose.

When we all did it the heroin sang a dirge in our veins -
no more fear of death with so many dead.
it was almost as though their spirits were calling
and the closer we got the more peaceful we felt.

One time I once knelt before a statue of Buddha
in a village long conquered, long lost to our bullets
and I felt a peace the Vietnamese must surely have felt
in their culture and hamlets and farms throughout time.

And I prayed to myself and the spirit within me
(for I no longer believed in anything else)
that the dead, the dying, the soul-burnouts of 'Nam
will not have died in vain
will not have lived in vain
will not live in vain.

Only the living, the survivors can tell you,
not the judges or scholars or politicos
it's only the survivors that correctly inform you
it's only the survivors that can plead with you never to go.

.

- by Mark S. Foley

Go to Mark's Page

Poetry Page

Synergy Home