My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.
Yusef Komunyakaa
Facing It: Show Don’t Tell Analysis
Yusef Komunyakaa's poem "Facing It" takes advantage of a unique setting: the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington, D.C. Bearing the names of the American military personnel who died in the war, the wall is made of polished stone so those who view it see their own images reflecting off the names of the dead. By facing "it"—the Memorial—the poem's speaker finds himself facing other "its," including his past as a veteran and his mixed feelings about the present.
At the start of the poem, the speaker's "black face fades,/ hiding inside the black granite." We don't know what he is hiding from, only that he seems daunted. In its third line—the only appearance of the past tense in the poem—he says, "I said I wouldn't/ dammit: No tears," and reveals that he has been anxious about this moment. In the following stark, four-word line, "I'm stone. I'm flesh," the images literally describe the speaker and his reflection in the wall. But the contrasting nouns, both rich in connotation, suggest powerful emotions are being evoked. The "clouded reflection" of his "stone" self eyes him "like a bird of prey."
The speaker's first physical action is to turn, a movement that makes the stone let him go. But with another turn he's back inside, going "down the 58,022 names,/ half-expecting to find" his own. Instead, he touches the name Andrew Johnson (a soldier from the poet's hometown of Bogalusa, Louisiana) and sees the white flash of the booby trap that killed Johnson. Without commenting upon this memory, the speaker sees "Names shimmer on a woman's blouse/ but when she walks away/ the names stay on the wall," suggesting the war's indelible effect. The first female character in the poem, this woman seems freer than the speaker, able to leave.
Again, without comment, the speaker's gaze remains fixed upon the wall as a flurry of images—possibly memories, possibly real reflections—flash at him. One of the most striking is that of a white vet, whose face "floats closer" until the two look through the same space, the present and past overlapping.
Earlier in the poem the speaker was stone, then flesh; now he says, "I'm a window." He has become something to look through, and although it's unclear whether he's an empty space or a portal to understanding, at this moment he is no longer divided into two selves; from this moment on, in fact, he stops talking about himself altogether. Focusing on the other vet, the speaker notes, "He's lost his right arm," and there is a momentary sense of alarm until the next line explains, "inside the stone."
Another trick of the light sharpens the poem's last image. The speaker imagines a woman is trying to erase names, but "No, she's brushing a boy's hair." Here the speaker corrects himself and chooses the more innocent possibility, suggesting that it is important for him to get it right, to make sense of the haunting images from both the present and the past.
Read a biography of the poet Yusef Komunyakaa at the Poetry Foundation.
- Look for line breaks that create double meanings or add tension to the poem. How do these moments reflect the speaker's experience of looking at the wall?
- What do internal rhyme and other repetitions of sound and image contribute to the music and feel of this poem?
- What might be the speaker's goal in "facing it"? Think about both the poem itself and the action of looking at the wall.
- Finally, how are the names on the wall like (and unlike) a poem? How does the stone's surface act like a poem, inviting, reflecting, indicting the reader?
- "Facing It" is the final poem in Dien Cai Dau, a collection in which Komunyakaa looks back at his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam and as a veteran back in the United States. Have students look at other poems from this book and compare or contrast their vision of the war and its aftermath to the one in "Facing It."