Poem 5: The Gift in Wartime

Tran Mong Tu’s poignant anti-war elegy "The Gift in Wartime" is structured as a bitter dialogue of gift exchange between a bereaved widow and her deceased soldier husband. The widow offers her husband intimate gifts of life, beauty, and devotion: her youth, spring clouds, sweet perfumes, and endless tears. In return, the husband "gives" her the tragic artifacts of armed warfare: his olive-green beret, cold metal badges, rows of shiny medals, shrapnel embedded in his flesh, and finally, his cold corpse wrapped in a shroud. The poem powerfully deconstructs military glory: medals of silver and bronze cannot comfort a lonely bed or dry a widow’s tears. The elegy concludes with a heart-wrenching pledge that their love will only be reunited when she too enters the grave in the afterlife.

Practice questions curated specifically for Poem 5: The Gift in Wartime.