For Dwight D. Eisenhower on His Death
David McFadden
March 28/69
‘We can’t let those Communists take over in Viet Nam,’
he said, after the French were yanked,
‘what would we do for tin & tungsten? (what the hell’s tungsten)
We must set up a Pro-American Puppet Government
in Sigh-gone.’ It made so much sense
& he was so honest.
He’d outlived his world
& didn’t know it. He stepped out of
Gasoline Alley, Kansas, & it died behind him.
Gasoline Alley’d been cancelled by the Toronto Globe & Mail
a few months before his death – what would he have thought?
What were his secret thoughts on Allen Ginsberg?
Did he know anything about Marshall McLuhan?
‘The medium is the message? That’s pretty clever.’
A naked Viet Conger with a bomb strapped to his back
ran into an American compound & exploded
killing no one but himself, unknown, unnamed
& the next day Eisenhower was dead.
McFadden, David. “For Dwight D. Eisenhower on His Death.” Storm Warning: The New Canadian Poets. Ed. Al Purdy. Toronto: McClelland, 1971. 98.
Reprinted with permission from the Estate of David W. McFadden.