Ở tỉnh Thái Bình In Thai Binh province

In Thai Binh province

for Muriel and Jane

I’ve used up all my film on bombed hospitals,
bombed village schools, the scattered
lemon-yellow cocoons at the bombed silk-factory,

and for the moment all my tears too
are used up, having seen today
yet another child with its feet blown off,
a girl, this one, eleven years old,
patient and bewildered in her home, a fragiles
mall house of mud bricks among rice fields.

So I’ll use my dry burning eyes
to photograph within me
dark sails of the river boats,
warm slant of afternoon light
apricot on the brown, swift, wide river,
village towers –church and pagoda –on the far shore,
and a boy and small bird both
perched, relaxed, on a quietly grazing
buffalo.
Peace within the long war.

It is that life, unhurried, sure, persistent,
I must bring home when I try to bring
the war home,
Child, river, light.

Here the future, fabled bird
that has migrated away from America,
nests, and breeds, and sings,

common as any sparrow.