In naïveté the end begins, not knowing it is the last.
When Saigon was collapsing, my parents were separating.
My father had returned from Vietnam and they tried
to make it work but not all of him made it back.
He was haunted by what he saw and had to do
as were other young men drafted to Vietnam despite
being in college, being married, being fathers.
The fall of Saigon had nothing to do with leaves,
but overripe, sweaty, stifling abandonment that
shuttered facilities, ceased resources, made hollow
urgent official broadcasts to remain calm or steadfast
even though store shelves stayed empty while streets
filled with refugees, belongings left piecemeal
in dwellings and alleys. Soldiers, civil servants, allies
clutched their solid-state transistor radios awaiting
the signal to evacuate, while on the U.S. Embassy roof
powerful men swaggered and prepared for flight.
Finally Armed Forces Radio announced
“The temperature in Saigon is 105 and rising”
followed by dead air, the scratch of static,
as the needle dropped on the record
and a beloved culmination of American nostalgia
spun out over the airwaves –
“I’m dreaming of a White Christmas…”
Evacuate like we learned in school, in a line,
hands to ourselves, no squirming, pinching, hitting.
At this point, anticipating lunch, we are our own
hungry children dreading peas from giant cans
opened with industrial equipment, barely warmed.
We are our own soldiers navigating the lunch line
with our milk, our meal, and end up with a place to sit
before dodging spitwads sent hurling through the air
by some grimy kid through his contraband straw. If fortunate,
lunchrooms and playgrounds were our first battle fields.
“Just like the ones I used to know ….”
Evacuate like we presume the words to the song flowed
from Irving Berlin’s pen, as he sat in a desert hotel,
the temperature rising, his thoughts rising
about what we grip tightest, writing the best-selling song
of all time. On the surface, a song about a blanket of snow;
underneath, a song that pounds pure primal nostalgia –
a fantasy about home and childhood that we crave
and never had. Berlin’s memory of life before five:
watching as hungry flames of hatred devoured his family’s home
during an Imperial Russia Pogrom.
“Where the treetops glisten ….”
Evacuate while Saigon collapsed; military aid ceased.
Thousands climbed iron fences; scaled concrete walls;
did things they didn’t know how to do as panic grabbed
Saigon by the neck squeezing with its red grip
and threat of hard labor. Armed Forces Radio
kept playing the song as Marines flew helicopters
back and forth, pulling people off the roof of the U.S. Embassy –
friendships and families made by war. Their eyes sting from
an aroma of certain death in the frequent wind that blows
from each chopper’s blades.
Inhabit like my father and thousands others who
still fight the Vietnam War from their own rooftops.
His line is desperate, unyielding
as sweat runs down his face, pools in his ears,
drips from his nose, soaks his soul.
“… and children listen”
Children waited to be lifted from the roof,
evacuating like they might have learned from a lifetime of war.
They keep their hands to themselves, no squirming, pinching, hitting.
They aren’t listening for sleigh bells; have no nostalgia for snow
at this point, they long to be lifted out of terror;
their thin hands straining to hold on with enough force,
leaving everything they know behind, hoping to end up
with a place to sit or stand, with family
who would look out for them.
A song that asks if we fought for something
we never quite knew.
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