The Forgotten Children Of Quan Am (Sestina) Poem by Yen Cress

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.