CHILD OF MỸ LAI / a poem by LÊ DÂN

We promise one another /
poems from an Asian war  /  Don Luce introduced ....

                                  C h i l d    o f    M ỹ   L a i
                            a poem by  Lê  Dân * 
                                        

                          Dear  Mỹ Lai , my heart aches     /    With the cry of my young brother /
                         Dying beside the corpse of his mother and grand mother , /
                         Among the sound of guns   /  And barbarous sound  laughter  ..


Ricefields raise our children ,
Why kill them ,  our people ,
In so many places ,  so many times ?
Why add hatred and violence ?
Is it to achieve your rule
Upon this country
Of red blood and yellow skin ?
Look at the heap of  flesh and bones  !
From thousands of years of struggle ,
Each pricelss  person
Belongs to Việtnam .

My young brother is like a bud
Just growing on the tree of our nation ,
The root ,  his father ,  he has never met ;
The sap ,  his mother ,  he has never known ,
And so it is with millions of brothers and sisters .
They have killed him,  the bud of our tree ;
They have killed his mother ,
Killed his source of milk ,
Yet can they kill four thousand years of tradition ?
Can they kill his father
Who carries the gun against  the invaders ?
And can they kill the hatred
Within him as he dies ?
His farewell is not his last word
For his brothers  will be born and grow up ,
Like the warriors of  Phù  Đổng  ,
To repay the nation
Which has  raised them ,
The nation standing like a centennial tree ,
And on its branches  like the green buds
They will grow up ,
Millions of hands to end this war
And drive from our country
These  killers who cannot hide themselves .

Humanity will judge them .
Mỹ Lai ,   I ache every second ,
I cannot wait for an hour ,
Or for the evening to pass ,
I must act now 
To save   old mothers 
 And young children .
    []

 LÊ   DÂN
----
*   a stage manager of   Republic of Việtnam   .

( from  WE PROMISE ONE ANOTHER - poems from an Asian war  /
   selected, translated by   DON LUCE  , JOHN  C. SCHAFER  &
   JACQUELYN CHAGNON  -   Published by  the Indochina Mobile
   Education Project -   Washington, D.C, 1971 -  p.:  41  - 42 )