Part One: 
Vietnam Quartet 1968 – 1969
by Stephen H. Young
i.LZ BaldyGraves Registration
20 December 68
Daylight, nightlight, all lights;
the road heavily worn now,
bears another burden.
Lives lie fallow for all time.
Green blurs hurtling through space
and time,
no longer caring when they sprawl
red-running heads on the green moss.
Once sweating, now stench-soaked corpses
litter the hallways of national pride.
ii.Tien Phuouc
20 March 69
Phantasmagoric days
are blurred by fear, and pass,
a honied sleep denied
by aching, tortured nights,
the smell of fear and death
and old mosquito spray
A broken life, preset.
A clock without a face
the slopes of love
the fires of fear
the sweat of sleepless nights
and hopeless, broken days
with dying, bloodied men
and molding pictures of
my little boy:
a corpse but twenty years
away from flies and ants
and a rotten rubber bag.
iii.Da Nang
30 May 69
Silken, feathered raindrops fall
on empty ammo boxes,
old brown junks
and nets on poles
The musty odors of the sea
bring forth, like lizards
from the rocks, recollections
of my sandy, surf-torn
home twelve thousand miles away
where birds and spirits of the birds
are free:
A place where blood spilled out,
sinks straight down into the sand
and does not run,
unclotted, to the nearest stream
that joins the sea
and going out, washes ever homeward,
restlessly.
iv.Phu Bai
15 Sept 69
Dripping, dripping droplets
run down corrugated tin leaves
into swollen muddy ditches.
Sour odors from rotting jungle tangles
invade,
a filthy beard borne on the edge
of sullen, gray, dangerous clouds.
The circle is complete.
I am where I began
but not the same.
The losses:
A year has been torn from my flesh,
thirty pounds from my health.
My accomplishments frozen,
my liberties stolen.
Twelve thousand miles of neglect
make my wife fat with disuse,
my son ill-tempered,
a rudderless craft
in the gale of childhood.
The gains:
A respect for terror,
a certain knowledge
A livid scar where
has been torn away.
And
a cool dispassion to mask
with a readiness to kill
but not feeling fear.
The circle is complete.
I am where I began
but not the same.
Part Two: Post War Anthem
by Wende M. Young
i.Born – 26 July 1970 – San Antonio, TX
Born in a Texas Army Camp
there were patches of green
but mostly dirt
something I could pick up
and rub on my hands.
it’s cracked and dry
like a road map
and the edges are never softened to mud
because the sky won’t split open
to let it go.
my father went to Vietnam
and when he came back
I was conceived
like a soldier of misfortune
created out of the violent misgivings
and frustration
of the war.
stormy child
made to be strong.
ii.Photographs 1968 – 1969
Ammo boxes,
vaporous mosquito nets,
rivers of mud.
My father had spoken of the sounds
of helicopters come to rescue
a locust swell as if they were all around
the screams of those within
the crushing stench of them burning alive
they fall like flares to the ground.
Bombs dove for the cross
on the roof of the EVAC unit
where he was stationed,
doctors crawled under their patients’ beds for cover.
He kept slides of the brigade
lined up on the ground
twisted wildly in rows
eyes wide open
their bodies pulled to tatters by gunfire in the bush,
the ground so dark
it is impossible to tell the difference between dirt and blood.
Even living men were indistinct
in the fists of rain.
iii.Homeward
Texas, 1999
Now alone in the house where I was conceived
I look for the cord
that attaches me to those jungles.
It has been another ten years.
Day has peeled its first skin from the earth
I see our distant house where the plots of land neatly divide the streets where the moon broke upon my bedroom floor.
and in the pulp of light
I see the safety of the old shed,
the wood pile
and the road that leads to the highway
and I am running through your fields
my face and hair wet with dew
I am running.
I am where you began.
iv.The 20th Anniversary of the 196th Light Infantry Brigade:
A Final Salute to the Vietnam War
Indiana, 1989
In the blue light of predawn
I awake to my father
standing dark against the window
I see his breath on the glass as he speaks,
“The tanks have finally come.”
It is not yet morning
and I hear him grope along the hall
a pillar of liberty lost
on men
who pushed forward, through to the flares
and the resound of artillery
firing off rhythmic destruction
lost in the brilliance
they no longer breathe but in photographs.
The shadows of their souls dance in this darkness
with the dreams that murder his sleep
to every aching turn of ten years;
they have finally come to take him.
In my bedroom
I can hear the cars moan on the highway
I know all that was hit in the night
pulls itself to the side of the road to die.
Drawn from sleep I see him, for a moment, thin as when I was a child,
my heart divides.
He senses it
and from the darkness
his jaw grinds,
I hear his hard teeth whine.
“Vietnam Quartet”, Copyrights Stephen H. Young 1968, 1969
“Post War Anthem”, Copyrights Wende M. Young 1989 – 1991, 1999
“Duet” arrangement Copyrights W.M. Young 1999
