south vietnam the baby in the arms of the american nurse - poems by the phong - 4

              what a sight ! 550,000 GI ' s in vietnam  4
                                                      poem by the phong

                                                                           TRANSLATED BY ĐÀM XUÂN CẬN

 Saigon October, 22, 1968


Well, well 
 Our friends
                 the Anmericans have arrived in our country
They have manpower
They have money
 They have munitions
( the ingredients of the magic formula )
 And there are 550,000 of them

Wild places
                 turn into real estates
Petrified
           stupefied
 we Vietnamese see American establishments mushrooming
 Cam Ranh Bay, Cam Ranh Air Base, Cam Ranh City
Quy Nhon, Chu Lai, Ta^n Sơn Nhất, Biên  Hòa  ...
Anywhere they set food in
             they are followed by our women and girls
                      the fun makers par excellence
 As for you
              you must produce passes
                                 when you come down to any of these places
  Don't you see signboards
                           reading ' Locals keep out ' 
 I know you   feel
 but don't let patriotism wall you in
 ( And I need not tell you true love defies petty  jealousy )
 In order not to be mad
                   keep telling yourself
 We must choose between the lesser of the two evils
                           namely  the Chinese and the Americans
  We all cherish
                 the freedom of profession
                               the freedom of life
                                   and the freedom to die of starvation
 I urge you to banish all somber thoughts
           which only cloud your knowledge of the real situation  of our country.

 Do you know
          what Vietnam is ?
                       Vietnam is the battefield
Of irrelevant Western styled democracy and phony socialist forces
 We
        have been paying
                    for this
                        all our lives
                                 but  not to  avail ...
 Without respite
              day and night
                    our country exposes itself
                                  to rockets and bombs
 Hundred of raids are being carried out daily
                                     how many have died ?
We don' t know
              the dead never asked to be counted
                                  or even to be remembered
We can only be sure of one thing :
                  we will never suffer overpopulation.

 For the survivors
                 each  grain of rice we eat
                          is imported from the vast field in Cailfornia
 Germany and Korea are divided countries too 
                                      but they are doing all right
While we are to suffer in the most obscene way
                                                     What  an irony ! 
 I' ve been  walking all roads of the beloved land
                                                             including  foothpaths .


 One afternoon when I stopped, terribly hungry
 What have I to tell you ?
Where can I ask 
            for a clean breathing space ?
 in thousand of bars from  muddy  Pleiku, Kontum,
                                        to dusty Nha Trang   Đà nẵng
Our girls brazenly ply their trade to sex- starved GI'  s .
 Colored !
Whites !
Reds!
 Black !
Democarcy protectors !
 Freedom fighters !
I have seen them all !
 Right ! Right ! They are always right with women!

 Lovers of a quite buck
               our girls are not too bad
                                          after all !
A Negro GI always showers dollar notes on the girls he sleeps with
He pays double everywhere
                     starting from the brothel
( He does so out of frustation with his colleagues )
  man to man
 I do not object to them
                       what bothers me
                               is the fact there are so many indecent women .

Do you see my friend
' special ' advertisements  inserted in English langauge dailies ? 
With  one hundred dollars
               one third of the montly salary of a GI
                           you can buy two girls from good Vietnamese families
The color of your skin
                      does not really matter.

 O my God !
I know of a family with two girl
  For some reason that I dare not elaborate
 the elder sister set out to make love with one GI after another
She soon become unfit
                   and bed-ridden
Her younger sister cried loud
                  sinking into the deeping darkness
 On the following morning
                    a GI turned up
                                   saying he wanted the money back
He was simply not satisfied
                      he had not get the right value for his money.

 How the hell could I believe it ?
            The frail younger sister hurried to follow him
To a dingy hotel room
               in stormy weather
 Her parents lost news of her in a month
                                   until one sad evening
The same GI appeared to ask them
              to come the 3rd Field Hospital
                                             to claim her corpse
 She was lying there
                covered by a sheet
                                  her face pallid
She was the wife of a Vietnamese soldier
                      They were with each other only two days
 Out of two years of married life
( You must find this hard to understand )  
                 His battalion fought
                                at  Khe Sanh
                                      Lang Vei 
                                              and A  Shau
  He was the only survivor of a whole platoon
                               he was allowed to come home this time
 Nobody dared to tell him the cause of her death
                                       he would not believe it anyway
 But for him
             she was dead as any other dead person
                          he did not need to know  anymore.


 We have got
              Cam Ranh City, Cam Ranh Air Base
 Even in Tân Sơn Nhất
              the main strip has got a foreign name
We are living in our own land
            and  we feel estranged
                        as if we are yellow Negroes

 Today
            the 22nd of October, 1968
 The radio annouced
           the change of color of  the MPC's * took effect since yesterday
 I agree completely
            I have unreserved praise
                              for this just measure
 But what did I see  ?
                     Since seven this morning
                              a stream of sad-faced women and girls
 Cramming the road to Tân Sơn Nhất Airport
                                             to present a petition
Their property
                   their  savings
                           their payments for services
                                                  had come to nothing ...


 In an office there was a Vietnamese woman
                             whose officer husband was away
She had a very cute son
                             he could mumble a few words
                                          he wept and screamed
                  being very sacred of his mother's American visitors
 Unlike her
                he was not a  bit impressed by dollars
Shaking his head
                 shouting louder,
                         broken in tears,
                               he called his father's nam
Alas! 
       his father had long been denied leave
Now he was leading his troops against the enemy in the highlands
The woman worked for the Americans
                                  to getmoney
                                         and that would be that - she thought -
The kinky American officer who employed her thought a bit differently
He said:
            " I will help you                  
                     your husband is an army officer
                                         he is my best friend ! "
Not long after that
                he feel madly in love with her.


One  raining evening
                 he proposed to drive her home
                               it rained ,
                                              it rained ,
The car ran smoothly on the road
                 when he suddenly pressed the brake pedal.
The car didn' t overturn
       but she was trapped squarely on his lap
holding her tight
                  in his two hairy arms
                              he kissed her savagely
                                          raped her in the back seat
He gave her all the MPC's
             he got
                  a hell lot of money I tell you.

 That night
          her child  go to bed early
                 unaware the officer had taken the place of his father
                                 in the bed of his parents
The next morning
                he got up
                          amazed to see so many MPC's
He did not like them
               he tore them to pieces
                         calling his mother

startled
          she rushed  to him
                      handed him a parcel of candies
 telling him it was from his father in the war zone.

Jubilant
         he held it tight
                mumbling his father's name
Dead tired
          after a hellish night of love
                     she did not bother to go to work
Streching her shouders
              half smiling
                         she looked at her bed filled with MPC 's
All this from the work of a single night,
               now she became a millionairess
She summoned the household
                 handing out  to them all Vietnamese notes left to her
 (  The 500 piaster note with the hero Trần Hưng Đạo on  
     The 200 piaster note with the hero Quang Trung  on
     The 100 piaster note with Marechal Lê Văn Duyệt on )  


 She said: 
        "   I give you all these cheap  thing
                     I do not want them anymore
                               They are very, very cheap ..."

Today
              the 22nd of October
                        she came to work
                               read about it all in the newspaper
Two days ago
            the American authorities announced the change of color of the MPC's
She wanted to cry
             her dream of wealth
                      remained a dream.
She was taken to the hospital
after swalloving an overdose of sleeping pills
 and she refused to be brought home
for fear of seeing the worthless pile of dollars
 She broke down again
          those around her thought her delirious
 when they heard her speaking English to herself : 
                                     ' Go home
                                                 Go home
                                                           the Yankee
                                                                        I disliked ...'


 Today
I  went out
            the roads now are as good as the highways in the States
I felt gratified to the RMK
              and the US Army financed reconstruction program .


Today I went out
                         and I had a strange feeling
                                       there was no election time
But I see
                  NIXON-AGNEW posters evrywhere
                                             I was confused beyond words,
 I want to ask ' them'  what they think
I want to ask
            the soldier whose wife died in the hospital
                     exhausted from making love with the GI 's
                           the officer whose wife became delirious after lose ' hard earned ' money
I have  a further question
                    to ask a good American like Bernard Fall
 He who wrote ' The Two Vietnam '  dicussing problems in both the North
                                                                                           and the South
 and died
                 on Vietnam soil
On  a field trip
            with the US Marine in Quảng Trị Province
 I want to ask good Americans
                        like the US Missionary
Who tried to learn about us
                       and to good things in the name of Christ
 You are people of wisdom
                         people of strength
                                 but are you honest enough
To admit the  stupid  mistakes your fellow countrymen committed
                                                                             the name of friendship
 I for one cannot entertain
                  the prospect of your girl becoming prostitute and boys pimps .

This land of ours counts on you
 Men who are not Communists
Men who have convictions
Men who are not mercenaries
Men who have dignity
Men who do not allow wives to work  for Americans
 Men who bring salvation  

I know you will feel humiliated
 I know you will hate me
 I tell you
               you  must  learn American
If you want to know
 what the hell is going on ...

SAIGON OCTOBER 22, 1968


 poem by the phong


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*  Military Payment Cettificates ( MPC' s )  are issued to servicemen as currency for miliatry -operated facilities and services provided in Vietnam.   they are used in lieu of ' the green dollar'.



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                                                SOUTH VIETNAM
                                                THE BABY IN THE ARMS OF THE AMERICAN NURSE
                                                 poems by THEPHONG
                                                 translated   from the Vietnamese
                                                 by ĐÀM XUÂN CẬN
                          
                                                 Reprinted 1970

                                                 A Dai Nam Van Hien Book
                                                  First published in VIETNAM
                                                 by DAI NAM VAN HIEN BOOKS, 1968.

                                                Published in Vietnamese :
                                                NAM VIỆTNAM ĐỨA TRẺ THƠ
                                                CỦA VÚ EM HUÊ KỲ
                                                 ( bilingual ) 
                                                 Saigon 1968.

                                                Mimeographet at
                                                SAIGON, December,  1970.

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