Translated from the Slovakian
I enlisted with the god of second chances
Knowing my chances were second to none.
I surrendered my soul and my passport
When I entered my new life’s routine
In service to the colors of France.
I’d pledged my honor and fidelity,
Or whatever romantic sh*te was required,
When I’d earned my coveted ticket
For the train ride from Marseilles to Toulouse.
A sheep that's learned to fill itself on meat.
The training was tough, but the treatment humane.
Not like the nonsense portrayed in the movies.
But I was prepared to march or die
On the day I was given my name,
Vojak Bojovnik, Légion étrangère.
THIS SPACE RESERVED FOR
DIEN BIEN PHU
Mosaic tablets are not monoliths.
It all depends (despair, or last best hope?)
whatever end of Tocqueville’s telescope
you happen to be viewing. One man’s myths
are gospels to another. Freedom fighters,
or filthy terrorists? A vexing ton
of evidence encumbers Lexington.
Our certain self-assertion might indict us.
A foreign army’s trampling our soil,
despoiling farms and cottages at will?
We’re justified (according, then, to Hoyle)
in using violence? It’s never quite as
simple as they say, those righteous writers.
Is Dien Bien Phu so far from Bunker Hill?
Step as you will through life,
A thousand ways, a thousand places.
Carry a home in your heart
Or spend years seeking the door
Where your soul will always smile.
Do you ease the way for others,
Or just yourself?
Do you climb great mountains
Just to leave them unchanged?
One day, the heights of holy Phu Si
Will lay as soft valleys.
We, only memories.
But our children’s children?
Will they, too, have reason to smile,
Like those dreaming strangers
Who finished their stairs for us?
Pa! the soldier come! with
gum and money and big big fun!
they like my aoi dai (dress) and
long black hair,
Pa! I meet fella, stripe on arm,
big heart, big dollar and home have
farm;
Pa! he want take me to mountain far,
Yes! OK?...Oh thank you Pa!
..................
Pa! I have baby now and fella gone...
I come home soon to village I can?
Yes? OK! thank you Pa!
Pa?... where you and sister and little Phu?
where Ma and friends and people too?
where the songbird breezy sing, where
the mill and rice and fish?
Pa! there is no song, no bird no fish,
all you gone I know not where,
only here a single path and grass so
stained by bone and death;
Oh Pa! Pa! Pa!
Lessons learned
by first the Chinese
then France
and the Unites States...
Never underestimate
unconventional units
or guerrilla warfare
supported by regular units...
Dien Bien Phu
Bernard B. Fall
called it
"Hell in a very small place"
soon after 1954
America walked the "Street without joy"
The Viet Minh
attacking satellite positions
seven in all
such names as
"Huguette"
"Claudine"
"Gabrielle"
"Beatrice"
General Giap
former school teacher
later besieged Khe Sanh
saved only by B-52 air strikes...
What men will die for
makes less sense
as time goes by...
Perhaps it is
the unspoken honor
among comrades
and brothers...
Still they soldiered on
60 years has passed
and around the world
the madness has grown...
~ ~ ~ ~
Long ago in Booville lived a Doo
Doo had a friend named Rue-Foo
Rue-Foo was obsessed with candy
But he was never handy
Then Rue-Foo found a mooing Phu-boo