Ten days into bivouac in rain and snow,
the draftees settled on one side of a small hill,
zipped into sleeping bags, smoked, talked some,
and as the air cooled and a fine drizzle fell,
covered their heads as best they could
in the musty smell of military mold
They slept but not well; the ground was lumpy;
their backpacks tough pillows; skin spongy
in the heavy woolen uniforms; yet they chilled
as they took them off, put them on,
squirming like larva in an early frost
At dawn, Ratan woke first,
pulled his cap across his forehead,
and staggered to the crest of the hill
in skivvies and unlaced boots
carrying only his cigarettes and lighter
“Look! See!” he quickly shouted,
lifting and spreading his arms to the dull sky
“Observe nature; observe how
half thee hill is barren with dew,
thee other half covered with snow,
parted right down thee middle as a macheteee
might split thee skull of a gook in twain”
“Aw fuck you, Phil,” the other soldiers shouted back,
and would have shot him if their weapons were loaded
“Too damn early for your bullshit! Go back to sleep!”
Ratan squatted on his haunches, lit a cigarette
He couldn’t tell the smoke from the cloud of his breath
“See here,” he told himself “Just as I have proclaimed
A wonderment hath happened in thee universe
On thee one side, thee snow; on the other side, thee dew
What doth such portend?”
They said he knelt like that until the medics arrived, carried him
catatonic in frozen form and strapped him into a field ambulance
The lesser men in our platoon jealously grumbled Ratan had just
bought himself a ticket out of The Nam
I have been thinking since that whatever Ratan saw looking out
from the Janus-faced hilltop revealed more intel than known by all
the generals, CIA analysts and brain trusts in Washington, D.C.
The word in 1966 among retired NCO’s who owned the bars
outside the base in Greater Tacoma, grinning as they said it,
was that this was going to be a very…very…long…long…war
