Homecoming Poem by Donald Bruce Dawe

Homecoming

Rating: 3.7


All day, day after day, they're bringing them home,
they're picking them up, those they can find, and bringing them home,
they're bringing them in, piled on the hulls of Grants, in trucks, in convoys,
they're zipping them up in green plastic bags,
they're tagging them now in Saigon, in the mortuary coolness
they're giving them names, they're rolling them out of
the deep-freeze lockers — on the tarmac at Tan Son Nhut
the noble jets are whining like hounds,
they are bringing them home
- curly heads, kinky-hairs, crew-cuts, balding non-coms
- they're high, now, high and higher, over the land, the steaming chow mein,
their shadows are tracing the blue curve of the Pacific
with sorrowful quick fingers, heading south, heading east,
home, home, home — and the coasts swing upward, the old ridiculous curvatures
of earth, the knuckled hills, the mangrove-swamps, the desert emptiness…
in their sterile housing they tilt towards these like skiers
- taxiing in, on the long runways, the howl of their homecoming rises
surrounding them like their last moments (the mash, the splendour)
then fading at length as they move
on to small towns where dogs in the frozen sunset
raise muzzles in mute salute,
and on to cities in whose wide web of suburbs
telegrams tremble like leaves from a wintering tree
and the spider grief swings in his bitter geometry
- they're bringing them home, now, too late, too early.

Homecoming
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Macsen Ellem-honeywill 25 June 2013

This is so bad it gave my dog cancer.

188 109 Reply
Kinky Aboriginal 23 August 2015

petrol memes

2 0
Gun 123 22 May 2017

Animal Abuse

1 0
Jonathan Pordoire 04 November 2013

This is so bad cancer decided it was going home.

32 119 Reply
Lukas Maran 05 August 2015

nice meme

0 0
Nate Higgers 18 July 2022

Kumala kumalal savesta

0 0 Reply
Chinedu Dike 19 June 2022

A poignant and heartrending piece

0 1 Reply
vlad put 24 May 2022

this fr

1 0 Reply
Chinedu Dike 08 April 2022

A poignant piece nicely crafted with conviction...

0 2 Reply
NiggaballsHD 26 August 2021

Man I hate

1 0 Reply
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Donald Bruce Dawe

Donald Bruce Dawe

Melbourne / Australia
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