Dispatches for the Colonial Office: In a Garbage Can in DaNang There Lived a Hobbit

Friday, September 18, 2026

Lawrence Hall

In a Garbage Can in DaNang, There Lived a Hobbit

“Take up and read!”

-St. Augustine of North Africa, Chapter XII, Confessions

Quonset huts in rows across the dunes

Smelling of diesel: hot white sands, hot white air

Bulldozers clanking along barbed-wire fencing

Dragonish coils against desperate scrub

ARVN guards in mirror-lensed gas-station shades

In watchtowers writhing in the summer sun

Scanning the huts, each its own tiger cage

Sandbags, heat and sand, metal bunks, heat, sand

A lidless garbage can of civilization’s leavings

And atop some rags and soda cans a book

I stopped. I looked. I took. I read:

“…one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green…”

Dispatches for the Colonial Office