È la solita storia: Remembering Bach Mai, Yemen, Ukraine and All the Faceless Dead
by Bob Zisk, New Mexico, 2023
It was the end of Advent in seventy-two,
The Magi came in a B-52
The cribs were wheeled into the basement, where
The sick and dying shook and prayed in fear.
The bombs, like rotten manna out of hell,
Gave scarcely any warning as they fell
Earthward, and filled the air with burning dead.
Their human smoke circled overhead.
Today we point and raise a weak outcry
As other little children scream and die,
All nameless as the babies of Bach Mai.
(On Dec. 22, 1972, in the so called Christmas Bombing the U.S. bombed Hanoi. No fewer than one hundred bombs struck Bach Mai Hospital, killing at least twenty-eight staff and an unspecified number of patients who had sheltered in the basement. In 1998 Bach Mai Hospital opened a special rehabilitation unit sponsored by Veterans for America. In 2000 Japan sponsored a reconstruction project at the hospital.)
Archibald Baxter’s Poetry
A collection of some of his works edited by Caitlin Duff: Download here
Poems
If I must dieRefaat Alareer (1979 - 2023)
Lest We Forget
Frances Palmer
for Auckland Museum's 2026 'Lest We Forget' poetry competition
Remembering War
Audrey van Ryn 12 April 2026
for Auckland Museum's 2026 'Lest We Forget' poetry competition
The Soldier and The Poet
28 July 2025
The C.O’s
6 November 2018
Kevin Clements with thanks to Leunig
22 August 2015
The Reading of the Names
11 August 2015
In The Flanders Snow
11 August 2015
The Military Museum
John Moller
a military officer in a NZ Army unit in Vietnam
The Greatest Lie
John Moller
a military officer in a NZ Army unit in Vietnam
Last Post by Carol Ann Duffy (2009)
It Will Make a Fine Hospital
by Andrew Dimitri
(from Winter in Northern Iraq, The Hippocrates Press 2019)
Ring Them Bells
by Marvin Hubbard
Witness
by Marvin Hubbard
È la solita storia: Remembering Bach Mai, Yemen, Ukraine and All the Faceless Dead
by Bob Zisk, New Mexico, 2023