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Best Poems From
YEN CRESS
(3/9/43)
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1.
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Salute to an American Soldier
I salute you, Soldier!
You are doing a job I cannot do
To protect
The values I treasure
And the beautiful land
I call Home.
There are things worth fighting for-
Important things
Like freedom
And justice
And the right to live
In safety
In the way one chooses
In the place one chooses.
There are things worse than war-
Terrible things
Like oppression
And unbridled power
And cruelty
Against the innocent
Against the weak
Against anyone.
So fight, Soldier.
Fight with courage
And honor
And the knowledge that it is right.
You do what has to be done.
You bring new glory
To Old Glory.
I am proud of you.
I pray for you.
I cheer you on.
I stand behind you
With my whole heart.
I salute you, Soldier.
Yen Cress
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2.
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The Forgotten Children of Quan Am (Sestina)
A Sestina for the Boat People
Small desperate men, on ebbing waves of hope,
Embark a craft unworthy of the sea.
Where once the red-striped yellow flag had flown,
Oppression makes them seek a peaceful home.
What cargo fills the gray, decrepit boat?
A small supply of water, food, and life.
Like Kieu, the exiles face a fateful life.
They crouch among their bits of stored-up hope,
Abandoned to this salt-scabbed, moldy boat
That rocks with sick'ning heaves adrift the sea.
The battered cage leaks memories of home,
Where freedom, right, and dignity have flown.
With every soldier's knock, their hearts had flown
On dragon's wings, precluding normal life
In Vietnam, beloved ancestral home,
Destroying mother's joy and father's hope
And forcing longing looks east to the sea,
Where hungry fish now eye the bulging boat.
Awash with retching bodies, wretched boat-
Above which moons a hundred times had flown,
No stranger to the seething, churning sea-
Keeps death from overwhelming tender life
And gives the hopeless spirit feeble hope
That once more flesh will find itself a home.
Ahead awaits a free and safe new home
To dream about while chafing in the boat.
The nightmare left behind engenders hope,
Without which every spirit would have flown
And left mere piles of bones devoid of life
To slip beneath the waves of yawning sea.
A trough, a crest-so surges on the sea.
Aboard the creaking planks he rendered home,
A fevered, sun-burnt body yields up life.
Relief and sorrow mingle on the boat.
Another's legs can stretch: a bird has flown;
Raw courage feeds on grief and scrawny hope.
Across the glistening sea, the lurching boat
Heads toward a home where freedom's flag is flown-
Tenacious life a testament to hope.
Yen Cress
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3.
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The Evil of Salem (Sestina)
Old Salem was a peaceful little town
In Massachusetts, set beside a hill.
Its people knelt to God in prayer each day,
To ask Him for forgiveness for their sin
And from temptation to deliver them.
'Twas thus till early Sixteen Ninety-One.
Among those righteous people there was one
Who was a stranger in that godly town.
Tituba, slave from islands far from them,
Had come to share their village by the hill.
She brought with her a darker kind of sin
Than anyone had seen before that day.
Surrounded by some girls one winter day,
Warmed by the fire, Tituba was the one
Who read their palms-and led them into sin.
Soon evil rumors raced throughout the town-
A horror darker than that shadowed hill.
Black magic-voodoo spells-Woe unto them!
A doctor checked the girls, pronouncing them
Bewitched! And following that fateful day,
A panic spread to reach beyond the hill.
Suspicious eyes were cast on every one
Who was the least bit odd, in that strange town.
To be eccentric was a deadly sin.
The townsfolk called them witches, cursed with sin,
And quickly moved to purge themselves of them.
They tried the victims in that dreadful town
For one whole year, day after shameful day.
They jailed a hundred fifty, one by one,
And twenty more they hanged on Gallows Hill!
What happened in the shadows of that hill
Where wives and daughters, innocent of sin,
Were punished when accused by anyone
Who bore resentment or a grudge toward them?
A truly evil thing began that day
When madness swept good sense from Salem town.
May we escape the sin that captured them,
And wisely judge each one, unlike that day
Below the hill when justice fled the town.
Yen Cress
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4.
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A Child's Logic
'What kind of dog is that? ' she asked.
'A bird dog.' answered they.
'So that's why he's tied up! ' she said,
'So he won't fly away! '
Yen Cress
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