The Ideas – The Poetry from Vietnam
Pham Van Anh, a poet from the land of Blue Dragon shares her five poems
Brilliant and bright
Walk on my foot
Walk on earth’s eyes
Walk through life and try
Not to miss any single catch of reality
Walk among the taste of regret
And the hope as well!
The Ideas
Like the nocturnal species
Quietly take root on life
The ideas hurriedly erode
The call splashed on the night
Barbaric!
Hanged between empty ideas
I fumblingly argued
That moment
Feeling in the feeling spoke up
Called the name of life
Brilliant and bright
Walk on my foot
Walk on earth’s eyes
Walk through life and try
Not to miss any single catch of reality
Walk among the taste of regret
And the hope as well
Life proven
By the light
By my body
Silent!
***
Water Theater
“Do I have to introduce myself out of here…?”
Mr. Teu* sends out commotion in the middle of the village’s pond
An old lotus season wafts the urban
Steadily gilds the farmland of Van Giang
There the pass, a peasant in black lacquer with the farming buffalo
Miss Chang Chang in vermillion picks up strawberry raises silkworm
Here the husk smashing, here the scene of fireworks
A countryside’s rustic piece that satisfies the inner eyes
Such fine aroma afternoon
Lai Oc (**) in spring
Crier puppet knocks on the past
Crier puppet calls future in
The artisans that soaked in cold water
The village’s artists whose ten finger tips stained of alluvial
Passionately scouring strings, pushing sticks
Tell the visitors stories of all around
How delightful the senh phach*** beat
Quivering water theatre
(*) A famous character in a Vietnam traditional water puppet play.
(**) famous water puppetry village of Long Hung commune, Van Giang district, Hung Yen province
(***) – The beat of Vietnam traditional instruments
***
Talk to each other
Flickering waves
Seagull sounds echo and pin on the waves
Like the bell-maker
A bell hanging on the tree
Tree sings…
Song about the harvest
About the bare footprint laying on the ground
And the morning plow
Talk to each other
By the wind sound the rain sound
Of the era born out of waves’ root
Talk to each other
By the sound of earth that silently cheering
Try crystallize like salty salt on the field
Night’s face paints day’s face
And our faces, along the bell, vanish
Lucky though, for there still a hand that tight
Brings water into the desert of heart.
***
On the Summit of Sadness
A hoot of an owl fades all along the skyline
I hear sadness rises to the summit
Want to fly, yet night dense
Want to flow, yet water surges
Just the tear profusely hurt like a cut
Sun blazed, promise broken,
Droplet of sunlight broken into dead leaves,
Aftertaste of a death day hanged on a cold frame
Strain every single cell transforming DNA chain
Transform the day return spirit to sadness
As the leaf falls it returns its spirit to the earth
To whom do we return the spirit?
To whom?
Keep on hoping that the shoulders are lighter
And the low note strands in the brain
Stop vibrating the praying chakra beat
A buffalo boy carrying the far-coming wind
Seeds of cabbage turnip wave their fertile leaf’s ears
Insects’ words cultivate the poor paddy field
Why listing out examples
Here, there’re only grey cloud, grey stone
And my dead body is turning grey
Giving the sun a sky burial amid high ground
I’m falling so fast
The throat ached the frigidness of a needle sting,
My heart ached the voice of my mother calling me words of the bloodline, the voice of he who calls me words of the lover.
For I’m exhausted and won’t get up again
Just the sound of wheel squeezes on the steel rail
Dashes to the black space
Calling no name
Not a single flash of late-night lamp.
***
Sudden Inspiration from ‘Al-Buraaq Wall’
Earth’s crust is a thousand trenches
Listen, magnetic is kicking words that echoed
Decimated conscious of a million souls turns into rage
Could not stop displaying terrific scene
Who would have thought the place of which the capital lies is a battleground where dead air has not disappeared
Who would believe in such deep forest there lies a whole radiant reign
“Al-Buraaq Wall” carries inner human’s determination
Astonishing ksana of birth and demise
Bewildered of the visible, the invisible
Where the Gods were in tormented bible verse
Story of Gaza strip make us utter
What if…
There exist what called peaceful Religion
Oh fragile hands just meant for wiping tears away
The “common reed” diplomacy that gives up land to avoid conflict
Oh vegetarian Ramadan months of ongoing retaliation
70 years of trembling cannon sound and onwards
Oh 12 Zodiac
Nebulae gives way to artificial constellations of star
Spits on the sky the bloody fireworks
Arrogantly shows off nuclear power on people’s life
Gaza strip could not decide its own fate
The nations are still wandering on a pilgrimage in search for Homeland
Regain faith and pride of their kind
Journey to the grave
Could not stop but seizing and tearing …
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