The Welcome Home Parade
They had a "Welcome Home Parade today,
And I decided not to go.
But I didn't lack for company;
Our 58,000 dead also didn't show.
I saw the bands, and the cheering crowds,
And in the background, the Capitol Dome,
But it's fifteen long, sad, years too late,
To welcome us back home.
I find it strange to be "Welcomed Home,"
Fifteen years after I returned.
But why am I so upset,
To see what, for so long I yearned?
Is it the memory of my first "Welcome Home,"
by two kids fresh from the dorm?
How they jeered and shouted "Baby-Killer"
And then they spat on my uniform.
O, it was so easy for them back on campus,
Or in Canada, if that was their lot.
Taking over the Student Dean's office,
While the less privileged were out getting shot.
And we mustn't forget the news media,
And their self-promotional game.
As they chronicled with glee--each night on TV,
Our dead, our wounded and our National shame.
And we must forget the Vietnamese,
Who we've cast of mind like a sinner.
Only their ghosts hear the music and mirth,
Of the guilt-erasing "Welcome Home" dinner.
Now the guns have long fallen silent:
And the cries of the wounded have died.
And their only memorial consists of a scar in the earth,
As if even our dead must hide.
Ah--but these are emotional memories,
In a generation that avoids all passion.
And who now can be called "Baby-Killer"
Since abortion has become all the fashion?
This generation, like God, can forgive all sins:
Treason and murder, to name but a few.
So isn't it really wonderful,
They can now forgive their own soldiers too?
So we stayed at home, my ghosts and me:
We're really not good at charades.
And we drank to the fifty-eight thousand,
Who "Came Home"
before
the parades.
©Nicholas Andreacchio
Webmaster: Thurman P. Woodfork
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