Why can’t the Vietnamese speak English?

War Memorial Museum, Ho Chi Minh City

Abe V Rotor

Because the GI spoke a different language
Never music to the Vietnamese ear,
He spoke with the gun, barked at passersby;
Through years he spoke cruel day and night
In distant thunders, in fires
Ranging in the forest and at sea.
He spoke of heroes of another land,
Of a cruel god, foreign, unknown.

Yet the Vietnamese well knew –
For who can’t know blood in any tongue?
Grief, sorrow, pain – words not spoken;
They just throb, they just spill.

Why can’t the Vietnamese speak English?
Ask the bare mountains and hills,
The bare trees and the passing breeze.~

Light from the Old Arch 2, AVR