South Vietnam

In South Vietnam, it was hot rain,
The kind of rain that assuages
Very little, it delivers only itself
And no relief, thick steam surges
Primped off the puddled dirt,
We ate noodles and watched
The side street from a window,
An old fan noisily shunting just
More hot air in our faces,
Yours, boiling over with sweat
Whilst I explained all about
My foreboding sense of déjà vu
And the rain, the pervasiveness
Of damp like placing cold hands
In wet pockets, the sound of tyre
Ripping and ploughing through water,
Mopeds and rickshaws here, rain
Thrusting down chopped up
By headlights and windscreen
Wipers. In the museum we stood
Staring at photographs of war,
Napalm, Agent Orange, records
As though they were orphanages
For suffering. We bought chewing gum
From the man who had no legs
Perched on a skateboard and postcards
Of the Mekong Delta that stretches
Out from a giant, muddied arm
With fingers reaching from a hand,
And then washes them as tangled webs
In the ocean, boats that carried us
Down it were no more than
Cradles for wide eyed babies
Who have seen nothing yet,
Waving to women waving back
As they scrubbed soup bowls squatting
On the banks of the river, and as I said
Over noodles, gesticulating with a chopstick,
Things seem to be rinsed away like by rain
Across pavements, but somewhere,
Somehow the memory remains, retelling
Or reminding, a bit like the dirt when it rains.