Vietnam Through a Window

Dr Abe V. Rotor

Through the window of an airplane,

I see a shroud of smoke turn into rain;

This is Vietnam now.

Its pains may linger, its wound a scar,

Blessed are her plains, golden in the sun.

Blessed are her people, victims yet victors

Of a David and Goliath war.

Through the window of the mind,

Through the window of a Western eye;

The world was blind for long, but not now.

As the one-eyed Nelson defied order

Cupping the wrong eye.

Through Milton’s window when lost

The sight, clearer is the view, deeper,

Deeper is the sense of seeing,

And the sense of being.

Through the window of a posh hotel

Over tree tops gracing the view,

Swaying and singing in the breeze,

While the city is buried in mist.

Wait, wait for time with ease.

For time knows all, cures all, forgets all,

Yet indelible is the lesson of mankind

That lust never last, it ends in fatal fall.

And pain endured is glory’s gain.

Through the window of ones soul,

Has spirituality lost its meaning?

Ask the Vietnamese toiling the fields

With a grave by his side.

Sans cross, sans tombstone,

Only a whisper of a name.

It is an old window I am seeing through,

My own, through a politics of disorder,

Greed and indifference, its spawn.

How can I raise a chin to greet you,

After you have mended your own?

I must have slept too long in comfort

And ease in plenty and play, in freedom,

Believing in a god I call Bathala,

Existential to my needs and caprice;

While you struggled for sanity

With a god by your side fighting,

And brought Olympus down.

Through a window from a bird’s eye

Opens a drama of human misery

And respite after the Big Brother

Had laid waste, desolate of hope and resolve,

Of wealth of any kind, yet the One,

Through another window, another time

Called His angels and down they came singing

The hymns before the Fall with the silence

Of guns, and the silence of the stars.

I see you fighting again,

Opening your doors to conquer the world

With homegrown rice, knowledge and valor,

Perhaps to pin it with another honor. ~