Erich Fried's fascinating meditation on the "language" of the Vietnam War

"What things are called"

Why were you not like the tree Trung Quan?
a girl says

That means
her lover is one of those burnt

The leaves of the tree Trung Quan do not catch fire
like bamboo poles or like human skin

II
Lazy Dog
is the name for an iron cross
between aerial bomb and dum-dum bullet
Safety Detonator
is a peasant tied to a rope
and driven ahead across a minefield
Tug of War
is dragging a prisoner
on a rope
behind a tank
through a village
by way of warning

Bundle
is a corpse
in a plaited mat
Harvest
a row of bundles
in a field

III
Some things mean as much
as the mood of
a high official or senior officer

And some mean as little
as the life of
a handful of peasants father mother three children

IV
Pacifying a village
means not only beheading
peasants who were suspect or had been denounced

Pacifying also means
cutting out their liver
and throwing it into the air
The liver is the seat of courage

V
Wearing black jeans and trousers
means
being a peasant
Being killed
means afterwards
having been a Vietcong


*I like this poem and revisit it here in light of the current use of terms that attempt to
diminish the raw horror of war, experienced by soldiers and civilians alike, transforming it into something more palatable/less shocking/less war-like to the point to which a Hollywood movie carries a warning label for violence and a televised war can be shown 24 hours a day, on every major network. Fried also raises the issue of presumed collective guilt on the part of "the enemy" to where in death political views seem to matter little, when in life, the mere appearance of affiliation can end your life. I am bringing up these poems not to critique current 'actions' but to show intersections of history and critical thought to where voices of criticism were systematically silenced by war, persecution and even execution, yet these voices and what they critiqued remain a reality and retain the same urgent need for reflection.*