Broken Arrow

it was once Saigon
but now it's all gone:
the muddy river slept and burned
and what have we learned?

painting it black won't get it back!

the body bags filled with Asian dirt
who said it wouldn't hurt
watching the helicopters at the embassy
the woman with her startled baby
grabbing the barbed wire wall
dodging shots before the fall
and all the President's men
in their white face
the conference table with expensive pens and fancy lace
and that perfect powder room
where the drunks sang delirious songs of doom

in the stone temples
the impassive gods sat hard and cold

watching fates bought and sold

in the parlors of the press
the readers were forced to guess
what in the streets of an American city
was real and what was simply witty

and on the television screens
cigarette smoke filled the air

while in Vietnam the midnight sparkle
was a phosphorescent flare
and young men lived and died there

while in the Pentagon
it was once Saigon
but now it's all gone
when the flesh gave way to marrow
the cry was 'Broken Arrow'