◆ SpookStack

asfuuvnus, JULY ZU, LY¥tZ " Hostile planes knife through cold and silent sky. ; . Hearse loudspeakers signal the approach: The Sirens that I heard in London — Another land, another time, another pang of history — I hear again. a) ; Theirs is the raucous call known well to ears that have heard war before. Who goes there overhead? Is he From the plains of Kansas, green slopes of Vermont, The soft-voiced south, the uproar of New York, The ever-greening Northwest U.S.A, ? s Who up there knows what I see here? Look: There goes the enemy: . * A sweet-eyed child chubby-legged on a bike. A mother caring anxiously for her young. ” A slender girl bent over green shoots in a paddy, , A rider off his bicycle and sitting by a hole — The single-occupancy shelter designed to beat the bomb. Men, women, children. . . the enemy is everywhere? And the targets abound. The factories, ports, rails, homes, hospitals, dikes .oO™ That hold the salted sea from land, ae - : Or coursing rivers that bring green life. er ; oe . Or death. SO , Who sits underground? I sit in comerete shelter rooms and talk of war. With a Vietnamese surgeon whom war has forced a To new techniques of saving lives. Cat ee ~ An Indian of supreme dignity who . .- Presides over the international group named to control the agreement of men who Decided 18 years ago to supervise a peace that hasn't come. An actress who knows the studios of Paris, London, Holiywood, Now to find, falling asleep at night, That her pillow is wet from tears " Brought forth by sights of war and thoughts of men , ° Her country has sent to ride the skies on tubes of death. Oh, Vietnam, Vietnam. Iknow your gentle, slow and. graceful people in the south, And now I see here, in Hanoi, the same soft sweetness, The same deep love of life and land. The same people, the same clothes, the same words, As those I know beyond the Ben Hai. ; Ve , Vietnam, tn ‘the enveloping heat of July, another flush comes to my face. How can it be? When will it stop? Who will say the word? * n 3 — John Sullivan