Prison Transfer--war

Prison Transfer--War

by Susan Rosenberg

My generation will remember

in an instant     the photo

100 children piled in a ditch

naked and bloody.

An Asian forest made bare from defoliants,

no leaves        oniy bodies.

The caption read MY LAI MASSACRE

My generation will remember Lt. Calley and his defense

"I was carrying out my superiors' orders."

And it's true, he was, carrying out orders.

This same generation never healed from the consequences

of that unjust war.

No reparations were paid, no relations restored, no bilateral

discussions held. Once the enemy always the enemy,

particularly if the enemy wins.

Monuments went up to pay homage to the dead.

(And even that was too late)

Marble to substitute for international law,

rhetoric in place of resources and respect.

Apocalyptic movies were made at great cost, and with great profit,

text books were written, history reworked to fit the current time.

But the questions remain

Who won? Why were we there? Was this genocide?

Doesn't agent orange kill more than trees?

The generals learned too. Better than we.

Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, Iraq.

Iraq.

The Vietnamese people are suffering still, as they will, until someone takes responsibility.

Yesterday while in transit in a prison van in chains and shackles,

I thought of war.

Beside me a woman sat, a woman born ten years after me in 1965 in Saigon.

A Vietnamese woman named Lynn was a prisoner too.

Her handcuffed wrists immobilized by the Black Box (used only in special cases).

Wrists framed with bright purple scars from slashing.

By whom I could only guess.

And as I looked at this woman from Vietnam born in Saigon but raised on

McDonalds I knew she was sick, I knew she was dying.

A victim of war.

This Vietnamese woman born in Saigon to an american

father who abandoned her

now suffers from AIDS dementia.

AIDS dementia which caused her to attack a white man and kill him with his own gun.

This once delicate young woman with AIDS, demented, in chains, en route to her death,

in a prison van. A victim of war.

Which war?

I do not know

Wasn't Lt. Calley only following orders?

And doesn't agent orange kill more than trees?

Susan Rosenberg is a political prisoner who has been imprisoned since 1984, serving an unprecedented 58 years for possession (not use) of explosives and false ID. Two years of this was served in the "High Security Unit," an experimental basement sensory deprivation prison in Lexington, Kentucky. This poem, written in July 1991 at Marianna Federal Prison, won the American poetry prize awarded by PEN, the international writers' human rights group. Write to Susan at: Susan Rosenberg, #03684-016, PMB 7007, Shawnee Unit, Marianna, FL 32446.