These are two poems from that trip to Hanoi.
The first one was begun in Hanoi and finished
in Boston and Maine soon after I got back.
And the other one--
the second one I'll read was begun in Hanoi
and finished in Maine almost a year
later-- well, about eight months later.
The first one is called "Fragrance
of Life, Odor of Death."
"All the while among the rubble even,
and in the hospitals, among the wounded,
not only beneath lofty clouds in temples
by the shores of lotus-dreaming lakes,
a fragrance, flowers, incense, the earth-mist rising
of mild daybreak in the delta.
Good smell of life.
It's in America where no bombs ever
have screamed down, smashing the buildings,
shredding the people's bodies, tossing
the fields of Kansas or Vermont or Maryland into the air.
To land wrong way up, a gash of earth-guts.
It's in America, everywhere, a faint seepage.
I smell death."