Poetry Magazine, Tikvah Feinstein, March 2001

Poetry Magazine

Tikvah Feinstein

USA

Combat Post Viet nam Duty 1968
(for Marshall)

I remember that you didn't trust, then.

But how could you trust?

Anything.

Together in bed after lovemaking

I would search your muscled back

for a glimmer of a soul. But you

were emptied.

You had returned from Viet Nam

a killer, rifle toting, camouflaged,

looking for the enemy in the woods

that surrounded our home, firing into trees

picking off cawing crows -- threats

every one; cleaning your rifle

after each death.

What does a killer do? The combat now left

to other high school grads. Four years,

a patriot, the last year spent destroying

a people with faces like the girl who

shared your first intimacy.

When all you knew was death, my young husband, you created in me a life; but

that frightened you also.

A little being you couldn't see, hiding

in the warm dark jungle of my womb.

You punched it out of there.

"Forget about that,"

said the doctor, a couple of months later,

a new life inside. Forget,

like they all told you to do about

night terrors -- forget about that.

Just forget.

And we tried because we knew:

in the jungle you either conform or

be a crow.