- There's a dead tiger on the sidewalk
- in front of our neighborhood bar
- and at the table next to the enormous carcass,
- a French hunter cursing the missing client
- who commissioned the kill.
- We are not in Kansas.
- The beached-up Legionnaire
- who owns the joint brings unbidden
- deaux Gabon, the cognac-and-sodas
- that are his specialité, dry, cooling, perfect.
- His Lao wife and exquisite children
- wipe tables, carry trays, fetch Gauloises.
- Fragile Vietnamese women float by
- arm in arm, the breezes lifting the panels
- of their gossamer ao dais, watched by the guys
- from Life, CBS and the New York Times,
- drinking Trente-trois from sweating bottles,
- their legs sprawling too casually
- from the rattan chairs, all wearing the
- safari shirts correspondents seem
- compelled to don when they leave
- their desks for foreign shores. Vespas,
- cyclos and bikes hurry les Saigonaise by.
- Last week a grenade was lobbed from such
- a Vespa into a café full of American "advisors."
- The death rolls are back, but now
- they are made of American names.
- Last month, when Diem's own
- paratroopers attacked his palace,
- we assumed festive firecrackers as
- Philippe danced into our room singing
- "Boom boom, maman, boom boom."
- A machine gun emplacement
- five doors away was firing at the insurgents.
- Behind shuttered windows, under
- a playhouse of mattresses, we listened
- to rebel-captured radio. Our neighbor,
- kind Mr. Dinh, hurried his wife and children
- to the greater safety of our batting-walled
- cave and gave us ears on the fighting,
- translating the urgent voices that filled
- our little fort. The paratroopers had a list
- of reforms, would not cease fire until
- Diem commited to the changes.
- Mr. Dinh shouted at the radio
- "Don't believe the lying bastard!"
- then translated their announcement
- that Diem had agreed to their demands.
- The firing stopped and we emerged
- to resume our lives. The paratroopers did not.
- All over the citySaigonaise have died,
- and nothing has changed.
- Mr. Dinh looks away when he sees us now,
- having noted, "Your government could
- have saved us from this tyrant."
- Last year, when we arrived,
- the briefing officer said,
- "If stopped by a Viet Minh patrol
- outside the city,
- for God's sake speak English.
- They will kill you if
- they think you're French."
- Now when they pass, as we have seen them,
- silent black forms slipping out of the trees,
- a lethal panorama moving across our windshield,
- we must pretend to be French.
- On a high terrace in Cap St. Jaques,
- gazing at the glittering South China Sea,
- light dances through a trellised arbor
- to play on our skins and on the platter of
- crimson mangos that fill our lungs with perfume
- and our mouths with enchantment.
