Vuong’s grandmother, who recalled that Saigon “fell during the snow song.” She was married to an American serviceman, and in another poem, Mr.
This poem, “Aubade With Burning City,” was based on the memories of Mr. “ The treetops glisten and children listen, the chief of police/ facedown in a pool of Coca-Cola./ A palm-sized photo of his father soaking/ beside his left ear.”Īs Bing Crosby croons the benediction “ May all your Christmases be white,” the Saigon sky is shredded with gunfire, “a military truck speeds through the intersection, children/ shrieking inside./ A bicycle hurled/ through a store window” and “footsteps fill the square like stones/ fallen from the sky.” In one of the searing poems in this remarkable new collection, Ocean Vuong juxtaposes chaotic scenes from the April 1975 fall of Saigon with lines from Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” - the song broadcast on Armed Forces Radio to signal that the final evacuation was underway:
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