Where Are You Now My Son

It's walking to the battleground that always makes me cry

I've met so few folks in my time who weren't afraid to die

But dawn bleeds with the people here and morning skies are red

As young girls load up bicycles with flowers for the dead

An aging woman picks along the craters and the rubble

A piece of cloth, a bit of shoe, a whole lifetime of trouble

A sobbing chant comes from her throat and splits the morning air

The single son she had last night is buried under her

They say that the war is done

Where are you now, my son?

An old man with unsteady gait and beard of ancient white

Bent to the ground with arms outstretched faltering in his plight

I took his hand to steady him, he stood and did not turn

But smiled and wept and bowed and mumbled softly, "Danke shoen"

The children on the roadsides of the villages and towns

Would stand around us laughing as we stood like giant clowns

The mourning bands told whom they'd lost by last night's phantom messenger

And they spoke their only words in English, "Johnson, Nixon, Kissinger"

Now that the war's being won

Where are you now, my son?

The siren gives a running break to those who live in town

Take the children and the blankets to the concrete underground

Sometimes we'd sing and joke and paint bright pictures on the wall

And wonder if we would die well and if we'd loved at all

The helmetless defiant ones sit on the curb and stare

At tracers flashing through the sky and planes bursting in air

But way out in the villages no warning comes before a blast

That means a sleeping child will never make it to the door

The days of our youth were fun

Where are you now, my son?

From the distant cabins in the sky where no man hears the sound

Of death on earth from his own bombs, six pilots were shot down

Next day six hulking bandaged men were dazzled by a room

Of newsmen. Sally keep the faith, let's hope this war ends soon

In a damaged prison camp where they no longer had command

They shook their heads, what irony, we thought peace was at hand

The preacher read a Christmas prayer and the men kneeled on the ground

Then sheepishly asked me to sing "They Drove Old Dixie Down"

Yours was the righteous gun

Where are you now, my son?

We gathered in the lobby celebrating Chrismas Eve

The French, the Poles, the Indians, Cubans and Vietnamese

The tiny tree our host had fixed sweetened familiar psalms

But the most sacred of Christmas prayers was shattered by the bombs

So back into the shelter where two lovely women rose

And with a brilliance and a fierceness and a gentleness which froze

The rest of us to silence as their voices soared with joy

Outshining every bomb that fell that night upon Hanoi

With bravery we have sun

But where are you now, my son?

Oh people of the shelters what a gift you've given me

To smile at me and quietly let me share your agony

And I can only bow in utter humbleness and ask

Forgiveness and forgiveness for the things we've brought to pass

The black pyjama'd culture that we tried to kill with pellet holes

And rows of tiny coffins we've paid for with our souls

Have built a spirit seldom seen in women and in men

And the white flower of Bac Mai will surely blossom once again

I've heard that the war is done

Then where are you now, my son?