Somerville poet Afaa Michael Weaver sent the LYRICAL this fine poem. Weaver is a professor at Simmons College in Boston, and an award-winning poet. He has received national and international acclaim for his work.

 When I Think of Vietnam  

Thinking of what is new, how nothing gets

beyond being already done, I stare at a decimated

apple seed, some unnamed rascal having made off

with the real fruit, my last hope for a spring

that is real, not the juggernaut of artificial corn.

I am perplexed, thinking perplexity is the door

to writing something new, a brave metaphor

or the last teenage dream I had in East Baltimore

before the naive wish to be thought worthwhile

by the grand machine, to become a soldier.

Then comes the sober sense of dogs roaming

streets where there is only a blank starvation,

and the awful stench of having eaten the planet

where we live all reminds me this poem must resist

all things that kill, things that add to war’s breath.

The life that smothers and gluts us makes it tough

to see how love grows through a bitter humility,

the barely audible whisper of people too wise

to believe the lies we Americans tell ourselves

about who Americans are and what belongs to us.

Afaa Michael Weaver 蔚雅風

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