Kontum Nocturne

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Tags:
  • War
    • ,
  • Military
    • ,
  • Loss

    Poem Commentary

    Based on personal experience in Kontum, Vietnam. 1968.

    Kontum Nocturne

    Kontum Nocturne 

    The Live Soldiers are jolted from their fitful slumbers.  “Everybody fall-out on the tarmac – choppers inbound with beaucoup body bags.” 

    Stumbling to comply, the engineer, the bookie, the pimply-faced teenager and the medical student who flunked his finals, shortly stand shivering in compliance.  They know the drill. 

    Mist ascends from the steel quilted landing area like cemetery fog in a bad vampire movie.  The Highlands are cold at night.  Burn all day, freeze all night.  

    Suddenly, helicopter blades beat the heavy, humid air into submission. 

    In a carefully choreographed aerial ballet, the flying hearses descend and disgorge their still, precious cargo in turn. 

    Silently 

    Reverently 

    The Live Soldiers stack the sagging, plastic sarcophaguses of comrades unknown. 

    A pile of dreams 

    unfulfilled

    Poem Comments

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    Johnny4444 commented on Kontum Nocturne

    08-31-2009

    Wow- that brought me back to 1966 quick enough, when I was a door gunner on one of those choppers in Nam, and how grateful I was not to be in one of those body bags when the day was over and we blew out our candles to pray for better days ahead.
    Reply to Comment

    HarverTomsson commented on Kontum Nocturne

    08-31-2009

    From their ironic title "The Live Soldiers" we know this one is about the dead ones. Maybe sometimes it is better to die before all one's dreams do. That, after all, may be a greater tragedy. Keep yours alive.
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    blindmaster commented on Kontum Nocturne

    08-10-2009

    I was born in 1976 but was greatly affected by the vietnam war and that era. I was baffled by the name? Is that vietnamese? I see a day in the life of a soldier in the jungles of vietnam and i can relate to a pile of dreams unfulfilled. I feel like one of those soldiers being stacked. Great pome!
    Reply to Comment

    docwhite

    08/17/2009

    Thanks for the comment. A nocturne is defined as follows: noc·turne (nŏk'tûrn') n. A painting of a night scene. An instrumental composition of a pensive, dreamy mood, especially one for the piano. [French, from Old French, nocturnal, from Latin nocturnus; see nocturnal.] Since the poem is about a pensive, reflective night scene I chose this term for the title. Kontum is a city in the Central Highlands of Vietnam where my experience took place.

    Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

    Robert Frost (1875-1963) American Poet.

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