child of mỹ lai/ by lê dân ( we promise one another / poems from an asian war/ published by the indochina mobile education project - WASHINGTON D.C. 1971)

                                 child of mỹ lai
                                 by lê dân


                                  Dear Mỹ Lai, my heart aches
                                                     With the cry of my young brother
                                                     Dying beside the corpse of his mother and grandmother,
                                                     Among the sound of guns
                                                     And barbarous laughter .

  a mother fears 

          ( p. 41 We promise one another  / artist unknown

                     Ricefields raise our children
                     Why kill them, our people,
                     In so many places, so many times ? 
                     Why add hatred and violence?  
                     Is it to achieve your rule
                     Upon this country 
                     Of red blood and yellow skin?
                     Look at the heap of flesh and bones! 
                     From thousands of years of struggle, 
                     Each priceless person bellong to Việt nam.
                     My young brother is like a bud  
                     Just growing on the tree of our nation,
                     The root, his father, he had never met;
                     The sap, his mother, he has never known,
                     And so it is with millions of brothers and sisters, 
                     They have killed him, the bud of out tree; 
                     They have killed his mother,
                     Killed his source of milk, 
                     Yet can they kill four thousand years of tradition? 
                     Can they kill his father
                     Who carries the gun against the invaders? 
                     And can they kill the hatred 
                     Within him as he dies? 
                     His farawell is not his last word 
                     For his brothers will be born and grow up,
                     Like the warriors of Phù Đổng, 
                     To repay the nation 
                     Which has raised them, 
                     The nation standing like a centennial tree,
                     And on its branches like the green buds 
                     They will grow up, 
                     Millions of hands to end this war
                     And drive from our country 
                     These killers who cannot hide themselves. 
                     Humanity will judge them,
                     Mỹ Lai, I ache every second, 
                     I cannot wait for an hour,
                     Or for the evening to pass,  
                     I must act now 
                     To save old mothers And young children .

                         lê dân

                         ( p. 41- 42  WE PROMISE ONE ANOTHER / selected, published by Don Luce, 
                                        John C. Schafer,  Jacquelyn Chagnon. )

                                                                                            artwork by  võ đình
                                                                                    (p: 42   We promise one another )
                                                                         

"My Lai Massacre (thảm sát Mỹ Lai)

took place in the hamlets of  Mỹ Lai and Mỹ Khê

  of Sơn Mỷ on March 16, 1968..."( more than 504 killed)

 (WIKIPEDIA)