Style, Speaking of Courage and Notes

Driving through Minnesota During the Hanoi Bombings
BY ROBERT BLY

We drive between lakes just turning green;   

Late June. The white turkeys have been moved   

A second time to new grass.

How long the seconds are in great pain!   

Terror just before death,

Shoulders torn, shot

From helicopters. “I saw the boy

being tortured with a telephone generator,”   

The sergeant said.

“I felt sorry for him

And blew his head off with a shotgun.”   

These instants become crystals,

Particles

The grass cannot dissolve. Our own gaiety   

Will end up

In Asia, and you will look down in your cup   

And see

Black Starfighters.

Our own cities were the ones we wanted to bomb!   

Therefore we will have to

Go far away

To atone

For the suffering of the stringy-chested   

And the short rice-fed ones, quivering   

In the helicopter like wild animals,

Shot in the chest, taken back to be questioned.

Robert Bly, "Driving through Minnesota during the Hanoi Bombings" from Selected Poems, published by HarperCollins Publishers.  Copyright © 1967 and renewed 1995 by Robert Bly.  Used by permission of Robert Bly.

Source: Selected Poems (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1986)