PHÜ NHÂM - SNIPER
Central Highlands, Viet Nam
Surfeit with surveillance, and the travel of regard -
My quenched eyes did slip no trifle - nothing couched, nothing barred,
By somber wings of shadow, nor the hollow sconce of night;
And I knew but if they wavered once, I'd nail them in my sight.
Above the hush and hiss of jungle; through the brake and broom of knotting,
Phü Nhâm, sniper, lies in waiting; waiting for the loud allotting
Of the disrupts and the jars of silence.
ACOUSTICS are my meat and forage; the fabric and design I found...
For my tenancy upon this earth, and my living lived in sound
Of starting foot, or slip of gait; or bolt of magazine;
The muffled, rippled noise of night, or rasp of sound unseen.
A shift of leaf or crack of bark; a sound to modulate the course of eye;
Abraded movement might I catch - a twitch or shuffle sly.
Or mayhap just the suck of breath, or gnash of crooked teeth,
Would aim me quick with thrust of gun, and bayonet unsheathe.
To abase that man; abort his peace; and raze his vital spark.
For I, assassin, am Phü Nhâm; sanctioned stalker of the dark;
And know, the hunt is past commence.
Senses all a sharpness feeding; probing through the press of quiet;
Ears like hollow, hungry trenchings - fed with noise and cadent diet;
To discriminate the prickled sounds of nocturne;
The cack of tropic bird - or hiss of lizard's churn.
I could the peel and puck of rotting wood discern with snatching;
Sounds of growth, of creeping vines in languid latching.
Sounds of scratch, of snort and bellow - muff of monsoon thunder;
Rain, a splash of LOUD in dappled streaking, canopied forever under
This overhang of moss and leaf. Phü Nhâm, locked in moments' pausing,
Hears approach in snapping; footfalls of a human's causing;
Creeping onward, distant through the dense.
Through bristled snag and thorny plush of nettle creeping
Moments sharp in taste are moments sharp in 'drenal seeping;
That never slake the lurch of bile like bitter vetching
That chokes the bowels with gag and throttled retching.
But on and on the sounds did saunter; much beyond the sick of feeling;
Outpaced sounds of foemen prowling, fording through the ooze and mealing,
Nearer to my zone of offense.
Toward the camouflage of reed and loaming; fronted well with bamboo raking,
Five men wary weave with crouching, ever lost in loose mistaking
Of the sounds they haven't heard. MY wisps of noise escape their tracking,
So - unknowing, all unseeing do they pass;
Phü Nhâm faced and fronted with their backing.
Hoisting quick with motion silent - cup and stock of weapon fitting;
Quiet menace snares the breath, and jets the nerves with moments' splitting
Of this bushwhack do or die. So up to scoping springs my rifle,
To shorten first the other's tenure; their living term to bate and stifle.
The firelocks of muzzleflashing 'tend the cracks of solitary shooting,
As report and ring of fired volleys mark its quarry sans disputing,
AMBUSH in its present tense.
Thus, it appeared, as the trappings and habiliments of this vestpocket war;
Of FIVE men trailing the halts of the Highlands, had I well taken out FOUR.
My world, a microcosm of audit and sound... of survivalist rigor,
And I continued myself to endure - to crouch and pull another trigger.