First the US murders men in small boats,
not bothering to offer evidence of any crime,
let alone a trial, just summary execution.
Then, committing piracy, my country hijacks
other countries’ merchant ships at sea.
And now today, my country’s kidnapped
another country’s sitting head of state.
Congress just a bunch of bleating sheep
and lick-spittle cringing sycophants.
Back when I was young, there was at least
a dog-&-pony show, the pretense of legality,
the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution based on
flagrant lies, but nonetheless the government
pretending that my war was constitutional.
Tonight I find myself remembering
a little Irish freighter, crew of eight,
out of Liverpool, bound for Dublin,
summer 1969, me an ex-Marine,
an ocean in between the country
that had sent me off to wage a war
against a people who had never
done me any harm, nor ever would.
Long starlit nights on the Irish Sea
standing watch with Ernie Kinch,
with Ishmael and Joseph Conrad,
dawn breaking on the Emerald Isle,
the home of leprechauns and rainbows.
What might my life have come to be
if I’d have chosen to remain in Ireland,
remained aboard the Marizell in 1969,
a deckhand with a different future
than the one I’ve all too often
had occasion to regret.
William “Bill” Daniel Ehrhart is an American poet, writer, scholar, and Vietnam veteran. He received the Purple Heart Medal and the Navy Combat Action Ribbon for his service in Vietnam. He holds a PhD from the University of Wales at Swansea. Ehrhart has been called “the dean of Vietnam war poetry” and is the author of more than 30 books, including Vietnam Perkasie: A Combat Marine Memoir, Passing Time: Memoir of a Vietnam Veteran Against the War, Busted: A Vietnam Veteran in Nixon’s America, and Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems. His most recent book is What We Can and Can’t Afford: Essays on Vietnam, Patriotism, and American Life(McFarland, 2023).