This Is Vietnam

Not only death-rattle of armies

Nor the booming, that as yet is at ebb,

Of the tides of fire.

Not only the villages cornered and bumped off like vermin,

The cities pouring like bats out of craters at evening.

Not only the ordure of empire,

Nor the skies that gather to contest it,

Nor the always deepening drone of the hatcheries of power.

Not only the franchise of violence,

The fogs of the streetriots,

Argument by uproar,

Suffrages of rubble,

The ballot of the sniper.

Not only the innocent breath that sleeps through the night.