[HT: Ace]
WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way.
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles –
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
Gary Snyder
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
— BY THEODORE ROETHKE
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
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Welcome home Colonel.
Son of a BITCH that shit still hurts.
Blessed rest for the formerly lost, and peace to family and friends.
I didn’t go to Vietnam, because I joined in 1975 at the age of 17. My dad was a WWII combat vet.
Vietnam. HFS. Everyone in my infantry unit that was a little older than I was a combat vet from Vietnam, and I remember most all of them. Their stories. Their eyes. One guy chopped off a VC’s head with his entrenching tool because he lost his rifle when he was shot by the guy. Another had nightmares at night after being a point man in a rifle platoon. He taught me so many skills I became a subject matter expert in my weapons system. He knew it all, upside down and backwards. Another couldn’t hold a job after coming home because one supervisor asked the asshole question: if he’d ever killed a kid. Yes, he had. The kid ran headlong into the grill of his 5 ton truck and there was no reaction time. He was spat upon when he entered the airport in SF on his return home.
Heroes. Hard men.
Other wars had tragedy, that’s not an argument. But Vietnam was an epic tragedy at the individual level.
My HS classmate’s brother came home 20 plus years late, in a small box. He wouldn’t stop flying his helicopter into withering fire because he was looking for his downed squadron commander. He was killed in this selfless act – put in for the medal but got the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously.
I never went, but I have my own memories of the era. I didn’t protest; I served. I don’t give a flying fuck for those who protested.
Sorry to say “I” so much. These are my personal observances of the war and the war era. They show how I feel.
If you say you’re against the Vietnam War even once, you have a piece of ice hanging on your heart. You fucking shit.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
We did not forget Colonel Knight. Someone, his family foremost, remembered.
Godspeed Colonel. Welcome home at last.
Rest in Peace
Casey,
I spent a few days in Saigon and the Cu Chi tunnels in 2003. I had read so much about Vietnam and since I was living and working in Asia, I had to go see first hand. I have a favorite picture of myself after the tunnel tour standing in front of a pile of old and benign American military munitions holding a Tiger beer. Even in the shade I was soaked in sweat. I can only image adding a flak vest, steel pot, full ruck and ammo for the pig.
As you are well aware the DSC is just below the MOH. One must just about die to get such awarded.
I have a book covering all the stories of guys in Vietnam winning the MOH. Have Gerard give me your address and I will mail it to you.
What a handsome man Col. Roy Knight is.Beautiful family.
Of course,all pilots are good looking,it’s a basic requirement.
What an honor for his son, Captain of another type of aircraft,to bring his Dad back.
Welcome home,Sir.
Rest in Peace.