Telling it like it is (Moral engagement, part 4)

The last post described the moral disengagement mechanism of euphemistic language (prettying up the ugly). Its opposite is the moral engagement mechanism of clear descriptive language (telling it like it is).  Poets and other artists through the years have probably done as good a job as anyone in describing the horrors of war. Today we share a poem from an anti-war Vietnam veteran, David Connolly, a native of South Boston, Massachusetts.

Why I Can’t

U.S. Army photo from Vietnam War. (In U.S. public domain; from WikiMedia Commons.)

Ratshit and the Weasel and I
Are behind this dike, see,
And Victor Charlie,
he’s giving us what for.
And Ratshit, he lifts his head,
just a little, but just enough
for the round
to go in one brown eye,
and I swear to Christ,
out the other.
And then he starts thrashing,
and  bleeding, and screaming,
and trying to get
the top of his head
to stay on,
but we have to keep shooting
A B-40 tunnels into the dike
and blows the Weasel against me.
He doesn’t get the chance
to decide whether or not
he should give up and die.
Now I’m crying
and  I’m screaming, “Medic,”
but I have to keep shooting.
At this point, I always wake,
and big, black Jerome
and little, white William,
my brothers,
are not dying beside me,
even though
I can still smell their blood,
Even though
I can still see them lying there.
You see, these two,
they’ve been taking turns
dying on me,
again and again and again
for all these long years,
and still people tell me,
“Forget Nam.”

by David Connolly

Reprinted by permission of the author.