Yusef Komunyakaa’s “2527th Birthday of the Buddha” is a poem of documentation, representing one of the most famous protest actions during the Vietnam War: the self-immolation of the Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Ðức on June 11, 1963. Unlike Josephine Miles, whose poem on the same subject is included earlier in this book, Komunyakaa (b. 1947) goes straight for the heart of the event itself, trying to imagine himself as a witness.
Komunyakaa grew up in Louisiana, then served in the Army in Vietnam, writing for the paper Southern Cross. After the war he began to write poetry, studying and earning graduate degrees at the University of Colorado and the University of California at Irvine. He has taught in the New Orleans public school system and at Indiana University, Princeton, and New York University. He won the Dark Room Poetry Prize for his 1988 collection Dien Cai Dau, based on his Vietnam experiences, from which the poem is taken; the title means “crazy in the head.” He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for Neon Vernacular, and his dramatic adaptation of the Tale of Gilgamesh was produced in 2013 by the Constellation Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.
When the motorcade rolled to a halt, Quang Duc
climbed out & sat down in the street.
He crossed his legs,
& the other monks & nuns grew around him like petals.
He challenged the morning sun,
debating with the air
he leafed through—visions brought down to earth.
Could his eyes burn the devil out of men?
A breath of peppermint oil
soothed someone’s cry. Beyond terror made flesh—
he burned like a bundle of black joss sticks.
A high wind that started in California
fanned flames, turned each blue page,
leaving only his heart intact.
Waves of saffron robes bowed to the gasoline can.