Dien Cai Dau is a book of poetry by Yusef Komunyakaa, who served in Vietnam as the editor of The Southern Cross, receiving a Bronze Star for his service.
In the first poem I chose, called "Tunnels," Komunyakaa details the experience the tunnel rat has underground. He is "forced onward by some need, some urge." That urge is out of survival, Komunyakaa writes that there is no time to think of the creatures in the tunnel, the tunnel rat has to be entirely focused on surviving. The poem ends with "the weight of the shotgun that will someday dig his grave." This shows how he views the war as an instrument of death. He isn't focused on the politics, just that the shotgun that would be used to protect the good soldier, will one day be used to kill him.
The next poem I chose is "We Never Know." It is about love and the war. From a distance the soldier looked like "he was swaying with a woman" despite the fact he was really dead upon closer look. In his clenched, dead hand he had a picture of his girl back home, who he will never see again. Finally the solider who found his fellow soldier dead, "turned him over, so he wouldn't be kissing the ground." Again this poem shows how war only leads to death and in this case it also kills love.
Finally in the poem "Loses" Komunyakaa chronicles the losses of war. First the soldier loses himself, and then his girlfriend. The live "poised like a slipknot becoming a noose" is a metaphor for the memories from the war, they strangle the surviving soldiers. The soldier ventures off into nature, specifically "White Cave," where he drifts away as the days pass him without notice.
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