The year I thought
as many words for mud
as it ladled out for boots --
slogging through two-by-two
in long ballistic lines -- I prayed.
I prayed when the monsoon surrounded
the moon and tracers shimmered
over the Perfume River, like ghosts
swimming. I prayed when mud-walking
sounded like chest wounds sucking.
Rice tried to be quiet,
clustered in green columns,
like an army in ambush.


Back home the world quaked
where I stepped, unbalanced,
and someone said, "It's over, now."


But for thirty years, the flood
plain of that ghost-river has called
me, like a bell buoy through thick fog.
I have navigated its night-shade
tides. I've watched it carry people away,
like kites swelled with wind, high
over the delta, the strings strung out
far, beyond any way back.
I've even seen -- through the muddy, conical
glow of a Brooklyn streetlight --
rain turn to rice.

Growing up, the holocaust
was always on the edge
of my life, like fringe
on a prayer shawl,


or the eyes of wolves
in Jack London stories,
where prospectors huddled
around a dying fire


with the hungry breath
and glowing desperation
of a nightmare waiting
just out of light's reach.

Look at this black wall.
Look how names and years
rise before they fall.
Look at this black roller
coaster, this stone-roster
of death; this black wall.


Already this black wall
is older than the soldiers
whose names it holds. Most are
the names of boys. They died
in red mud and dust, with pimples
and sentimental moustaches, the itch
of longing and close words
on their shedding lips. They died
in rock-beat wet dreams, with plans.
They died trying to kill,
like Orion striding over
the sky after prey, full of longing,
but never surviving the light of day.


They were boys. They died
naive. But for each name up
on that black wall, two who
made it home safe have taken
the fall on their own
swords, turned themselves
to stone. What kind of war
claims 56,000 KIAs with more
than 120,000 suicides placed
in monumental unmarked graves?


I was lucky: love pumped life
into the suicide-stone
hanging where I might have blown
a hole. But I have never stopped
crying, dreaming, or thinking
their black names.


I am the soul witness
and survivor to one boy's
turn to stone. I am his shroud
and urn, I am his headstone
and crown, for I was his last
sight and sound. He may be
my last thought. Even my children
sometimes want to know how far
my stare goes and how many names
did I know on this black wall.


Look at this black wall.
Look how names and years
rise before they fall.
Look at this black roller
coaster, this stone-roster
of death; this black wall.