II Face the Nation - Allen Ginsberg.mp3

[00:00.968]II
[00:04.020]13
[00:06.904]Face the Nation
[00:09.318]Thru Hickman’s rolling earth hills
[00:11.754]icy winter
[00:12.820]grey sky            bare trees lining the road
[00:16.002]South to Wichita
[00:17.785]you’re in the Pepsi Generation       Signum enroute
[00:21.906]Aiken Republican on the radio                60,000
[00:25.837]Northvietnamese troops now infiltrated but over 250,000
[00:31.703]South Vietnamese       armed men
[00:33.986]our Enemy —
[00:35.552]Not Hanoi our enemy
[00:38.020]Not China our enemy
[00:40.503]The Viet Cong !
[00:42.536]McNamara made a “bad guess”
[00:46.088]“ Bad Guess? ” chorused the Reporters.
[00:49.186]Yes, no more than a Bad Guess, in 1962
[00:53.923]“ 8000 American Troops handle the
[00:55.889]Situation ”
[00:57.172]Bad Guess
[00:59.305]in 1954, 80% of the
[01:02.590]Vietnamese people would’ve voted for Ho Chi Minh
[01:05.641]wrote Ike    years later      Mandate for Change
[01:11.325]A bad guess in the Pentagon
[01:14.774]And the Hawks were guessing all along
[01:17.825]
[01:18.488]14
[01:18.779]Bomb China’s 200,000,000
[01:20.883]cried Stennis from Mississippi
[01:23.469]I guess it was 3 weeks ago
[01:26.018]Holmes Alexander in Albuquerque Journal
[01:29.417]Provincial newsman
[01:31.099]said I guess we better begin to do that Now.
[01:34.933]his typewriter clacking in his aged office
[01:37.384]on a side street    under Sandia Mountain ?
[01:40.568]Half the world away from China
[01:42.952]Johnson got some bad advice Republican Aiken sang
[01:47.734]to the Newsmen over the radio
[01:50.799]The General guessed they’d stop infiltrating the South
[01:54.001]if they bombed the North —
[01:55.949]So I guess they bombed !
[01:58.132]Pale Indochinese boys came thronging thro the jungle
[02:01.334]in increased numbers
[02:03.099]to the scene of TERROR !
[02:04.319]
[02:04.685]15
[02:05.982]While the triangle-roofed Farmer’s Grain Elevator
[02:09.034]sat quietly by the side of the road
[02:10.990]along the railroad track
[02:13.266]American Eagle beating its wings over Asia
[02:16.900]million dollar helicopters
[02:19.149]a billion dollars worth of Marines
[02:21.433]who loved Aunt Betty
[02:23.801]Drawn from the shores and farms shaking
[02:27.086]from the high schools to the landing barge
[02:30.036]blowing the air thru their cheeks with fear
[02:32.402]in Life on Television
[02:34.150]
[02:34.534]16
[02:35.017]Put it this way on the radio
[02:37.684]Put it this way in television language
[02:40.703]Use  the  words
[02:42.034]language, language :
[02:43.784]“ A bad guess ”
[02:46.835]Put it this way in headlines
[02:49.284]Omaha World Herald —  Rusk Says Toughness
[02:54.336]Essential for Peace
[02:57.267]Put it this way
[02:58.301]Lincoln Nebraska morning Star —
[03:01.352]Vietnam War Brings Prosperity
[03:04.719]Put it this way
[03:06.184]Declared McNamara,        speaking language
[03:09.251]Asserted Maxwell Taylor
[03:11.134]General, Consultant to White House
[03:13.818]Vietcong losses leveling up three five zero zero
[03:16.918]per month
[03:18.100]Front page testimony February ’66
[03:21.404]Here in Nebraska same as Kansas same known in Saigon
[03:25.952]in Peking, in Moscow, same known
[03:29.335]by the youths of Liverpool three five zero zero
[03:33.969]the latest quotation in the human meat market —
[03:38.052]Father I cannot tell a lie !