{"id":101530,"date":"2017-11-20T12:01:36","date_gmt":"2017-11-20T12:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=101530"},"modified":"2017-11-19T17:20:29","modified_gmt":"2017-11-19T17:20:29","slug":"the-wall-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/11\/the-wall-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><em>Vietnam War: what to take away? An admiration for the heroism of Americans and Vietnamese caught up in a grotesque, immoral, unjust war, just trying to survive? Disgust at the venality of the old men in the background pulling the strings? A deep, abiding cynicism as we look into the future of our country? What? I dunno. I wrote <\/em>The Wall<em> in 1986 after visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC for the first time.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Descending into this declivity<br \/>\ndug into our nation&#8217;s capital<br \/>\nby the cloven hoof<br \/>\nof yet another one of our country&#8217;s<br \/>\ntropical wars<\/p>\n<p>Slipping past the names of those<br \/>\nwhose wounds<br \/>\nrefuse to heal<\/p>\n<p>Slipping past the panel where<br \/>\nmy name would have been<br \/>\ncould have been<br \/>\nperhaps should have been<\/p>\n<p>Down to The Wall&#8217;s greatest depth<br \/>\nwhere the beginning meets the end<br \/>\nI kneel<\/p>\n<p>Staring through my own reflection<br \/>\nbeyond the names of those<br \/>\nwho died so young<\/p>\n<p>Knowing now that The Wall<br \/>\nhas finally found me \u2013<br \/>\n58,000 thousand-yard stares<br \/>\nhave fixed on me<br \/>\nas if I were their Pole Star<br \/>\nas if I could guide their mute testimony<br \/>\nback into the world<br \/>\nas if I could connect all those dots<br \/>\nin the nighttime sky<\/p>\n<p>As if I could tell them<br \/>\nthe reason why<\/p>\n<p>______________________________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Doug Rawlings is one of the founders of <\/em>Veterans for Peace<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vietnam War: what to take away? An admiration for the heroism of Americans and Vietnamese caught up in a grotesque, immoral, unjust war, just trying to survive? Disgust at the venality of the old men in the background pulling the strings? A deep, abiding cynicism as we look into the future of our country? What? I dunno. I wrote The Wall in 1986 after visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC for the first time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":90243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}