Le Regardant En Face. (Translation) . Poem by Michael Walker

To read the English original, see Poem Hunter, Yusef Komunyakaa, Poems,38/38.
The poet, who fought in Vietnam and survived the war, visits the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.at dawn, and it is a highly emotional experience for him, as you would expect. There are 58,022 names on that shiny black granite memorial; one Andrew Johnson
was killed by a booby trap, the poet remembers. Another veteran on the list has lost his right arm. The granite memorial is shiny, so that the men's names seem to shimmer on a woman's blouse; but the names stay on the wall when she walks away.
There is real artistry in 'Facing It'. The poet sheds tears, although he vowed not to: he is made of flesh not steel, after all. He moves the scene to a plane flying in the sky, long ago in Vietnam. He does not linger too long before the black granite walls. He ends the serious poem in a low key: a woman brushing a boy's hair, though she appears to be rubbing out names on the wall. An optical illusion. Masterful use of anti-climax. There is first-rate variation of tone throughout the quite long poem, which is a memorial itself to the fallen men.
This would have to be the best poem to come out of the Vietnam war, I think. It is not just that Yusef Komunyakaa had the advantage of seeing the war at firsthand, it is what he made of that experience, to write the poem, that counts.