Some veterans of the Vietnam conflict live
out isolated lives in the American backwoods,
haunted, nevertheless, by their military pasts.
I
The man went before, but his thought
came after, into the pine-woods.
He nestled the axe-head, ate
bitter shoot, bilberry,
but his thought came after.
The cabin he fortified,
no other might enter;
the traps were full, his stomach not empty -
but his thought came after.
II
Look to his eyes; the thought
never left him.
Look to his thick arms' trembling
fragility;
the thought never left him.
Nightlong, from under
the bushes they come
scurrying crab-like,
'armed to the teeth',
wriggling past boulder,
quiet as scorpion,
'armed to the teeth'.
Nightlong they come -
the thought never left him.