The Vietnam Wall

Appendix line. A dig. An archaeologist can explain.
The walk is slow at first
Easy, a little black marble wall
Of a dollhouse,
A smoothness, a shine
The boys in the street want to give.
One name. And then more
Names, long lines, lines of names until
They are the shape of the U.N. building
Taller than I am: I have walked
Into a grave.
And everything I expect has been taken away, like that, quick: The names are not alphabetized. They are in the order of dying. An alphabet of – somewhere – screaming.
I start to walk out. I almost leave
But stop to look up names of friends,
My own name. There is somebody
Severiano Rios.
Little kids do not make the same noise
Here, junior high school boys don’t run
Or hold each other in headlocks.
No rules, something just persists
Like pinching on St. Patrick’s Day
Every year for no green. No one knows why.
Flowers are forced
Into the cracks
Between sections.
Men have cried
At this wall.
I have
Seen them.
Appendix line. A dig. An archaeologist can explain.
The walk is slow at first
Easy, a little black marble wall
Of a dollhouse,
A smoothness, a shine
The boys in the street want to give.
One name. And then more
Names, long lines, lines of names until
They are the shape of the U.N. building
Taller than I am: I have walked
Into a grave.
And everything I expect has been taken away, like that, quick: The names are not alphabetized. They are in the order of dying. An alphabet of – somewhere – screaming.
I start to walk out. I almost leave
But stop to look up names of friends,
My own name. There is somebody
Severiano Rios.
Little kids do not make the same noise
Here, junior high school boys don’t run
Or hold each other in headlocks.
No rules, something just persists
Like pinching on St. Patrick’s Day
Every year for no green. No one knows why.
Flowers are forced
Into the cracks
Between sections.
Men have cried
At this wall.
I have
Seen them.

Appendix