And the second one is called "Dragon of Revolutionary Love."
There is in Hanoi a lake, and in fact, there's
more than one lake, but at this particular lake is--
it may be called Dragon Lake.
I have an idea that's not actually its name,
but there's a legend about that lake
and that is that long ago, a hero of Vietnam
received from out the lake like King Arthur received the sword
Excalibur, received a golden sword
and with that, he saved his country in battle.
And when the battle was over and won,
he brought the sword back to return it to the lake.
And he tossed it into the center of the lake
and as it hit the water, it turned into a jade dragon.
And that dragon, just as King Arthur himself,
is said to sleep in Snowdon and someday will
come to liberate Wales- I'm half Welsh, you know.
So the dragon lives in the lake in Hanoi,
and at the time of greatest need emerges, and will emerge
to help the Vietnamese people.
So the poem is called "Dragon of Revolutionary Love,"
and it doesn't refer directly to that legend,
I wanted to explain the title.
There's a word in the poem "debridement" which
is sort of explained in the poem,
but it's perhaps a little curious
how I came by that word.
It's irrelevant basically to the poem,
but you may be interested to know that Muriel Rukeyser, who
was one of my two companions on that trip,
the other one being Jane Hart, a senator's wife from Michigan--
Phillip Hart's wife and herself a war tax resistor,
the only senator's wife I guess who has been active
against the war.
Well, Muriel Rukeyser, the poet, had an infected foot
while she was there and had to go to the hospital
to have it treated, and I went with her
because her French wasn't very good.
And she was afraid that they might not
understand exactly what needed to be done to it,
she'd had this before.
And it was a--
this particular kind of light scraping
that requires to be done very, very delicately.
And it was a new word to me, and it
got into this poem that came out of our trip.
You'll see where it occurs.
There are three short sections.
"One.
All the grievous wounds the murderers crudely disguised
as surgeons inflict on the innocent,
gouging their flesh and the Earth and rivers
of their flesh, are only debridements, light scrapings
of the layer just below the skin.
Breathing their own stale breath inside their masks, fingers
itching in bloody gloves, they fail
to touch the spirit dragon, alive in the bone
and marrow of their prey.
Two.
From the red river's many mouths, uprises a spirit song.
Glittering drops that fall free from the nets as fishermen
take their catch, or the bright scales of the spirit dragon.
Three.
To live beyond survival, when a whole child hurries to school
with a legless child on his back, both of them
flushed with pride, the spirit dragon flies alongside them."
[APPLAUSE]