You know what happens, you buy a book
and six years later you finally crack its spine.
A story enters; you hear a jet and a ticking

watch. These things you've heard before. Now,
four men stand up around a water hole. A fifth
man comes on selling an onion, a tomato,

and his daughter in Ben Hoa to cook and
clean, nothing like you're thinking. The men
can tell the tomato is full of sun

and the onion, a winter heart, but the
daughter is kilometers away. Who
can know? She may have bad breath and her teeth

rotten. Her mouth could be a raw fish, and
her farts smell of cabbage. The men feel gypped
and stone the seller. Their aim is good; the man

falls into the hole of past rains.
The tomato sinks to where
the spring begins. The onion freezes

the well. Under a foot of ice, the mystery swims
in the daughter. She sings to the killers, who
swear they hear (alto of course), "Purple Haze."

What fools they are they say to kill a man
as he dreams. They hobble into My Lai.
Turn that old book's page. See what happens.