Asia
Patience, Asia, with your Western
Brothers on this trembling planet
And our jumbled crazy notions
Of your prayers and your songs.
This is what the captain told us -
But we shiver and remember
Boys from our town brought the costumes.
Oh Captain Morgan, when wild turkeys
Rose and flew at your approaching,
Who could dream within the century,
Who could dream our very grandsons,
All those grandsons yet unborn,
Would be likewise soaring skyward,
Would go flying to the Asia
You had left behind forever?
Asia once was only fancy;
Asia once was only pink maps.
Heaven was more real than China.
In that first sod-schoolhouse atlas,
Children traced with tissue paper
Outlines that they later knew
As they know Mulberry Creek
Know Idana, Clifton, Green -
Marsciene Perreault was in India;
Dan has seen the Fiji Islands;
Lyle Hahn brought these kimonos
From a sojourn in Japan;
William Reed was held in prison
Three long years in Tokyo.
Morganville has traveled Asia,
Captain Morgan's distant ports.
Comment
While again stressing the smallness of the world, Carson is also connecting the past - Morgan's trips to Asia -
with the recent past - local men serving as soldiers in Asia.
Many of the items used in the scene were brought home by those same men.
This refers to both those flying in airplanes and those who traveled to Asia by ship.
Asia was once only something studied in school.
Some early schools were built of sod.
Mulberry Creek and these villages are near Morganville.
Dan is Dan Roenigk.
Carson is suggesting Morganville is connected to these distant places in Asia.