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Vera Kilgore Heilig: Her Poetry Lives (2017) H. Morris Williams, Marie Law Haire

That never was declared — or understood.
The beaks and talons of the Hawks and Doves

Tore at each other here at home.

The only ones who sang were those in civil strife—
A separate war — who chanted We shall overcome.

Young men in protest fled to Canada or Switzerland.
Blue-eyed Vietnam babies never saw their fair-skinned

Sirs
Dope peddlers flourished, Profiteers grew rich. Jane

Fonda toured Saigon.

Men, sick of fighting, for they knew not what, deserted.
The sky rained liquid fire that scarred the earth

And screaming children ran, tearing their burning clothes.
We who had lived through two but never seen a

War

Now watched war’s horrors while the toneless box
Totalled the faceless scores of those who daily died.

But there were heroes there,
Heroes who thought they knew why they were there.

Some died. Their wives or mothers got their medals.

Some lived or rotted in a jungle prison camp
Until they were brought home in Peace with Honor

But no victory.
War still goes on, and other wars darken horizons.

A Yankee general burning southern cities said
That war was Hell,

And Yeats once wondered

“What dread beast, its hour come round at last
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born”.

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