Poems to Cure the Waters

poem for Tê´t

Lang Co village, Vietnam
Lunar New Year, 31/1/1995
Ted Sexauer


This is the poem
that will save my life
this is the line that will cure me
this word, this, the word word the one

this breath the one I am

Rather than going on and on about Ted Sexauer, a Buddhist and a veteran of war, I'd like to leave space for his poems to speak his truths. On this day, as I enjoy the freedom and privilege of flying across an ocean, unchallenged and (inshallah) unharmed, it seems a wiser course to allow a poet to do what poets do: use words to explore, to question and reveal, to pray (on behalf of us all) for preservation.

The Well by the Trail to My An
Binh Dinh Province, 1970

I think of you
papa-san, grandfather,

Ông,
standing at your open well
there you are, smiling host
to a squad of well-armed foreigners, pulling up
red Folger’s coffee cans of cool sweet water
dousing bowed teenaged heads
eight young men this time, huge, all hairy
like dogs, bearing strange black rifles
(they will not go away) wearing only
boots and floppy war-green undershorts
careless youth from a rich world, blind
to soap water spilling back down the well
your task of diplomacy to keep the soap out
without getting shot

for once
I could see clearly what you thought
as I watched you grin and nod non-stop
like an imbecile, disappearing in that grin
into a sea of caricature papa-sans
I saw something I knew in your eyes
I saw you calling on the god
of get me out of this
I saw in you myself
desperate to preserve the healthful water