Women’s love
War’s ammunition
All join the battle.
Please offer Women
Peace!
Poetess Nguyen Van Anh was born on March 12, 1947. Her hometown is Xu Phuong – Thanh Chuong district– Nghe An province, Vietnam. She was a teacher who got Bachelor of Literature degree. She is member of Vietnam Writers’ Association and Nghe An Confederate Association of Literature and Arts. She has 15 books of poetry and prose to her credit and has achieved 11 Literary Awards.
Women and War
She chose the Verdant Spring strand to sew
Here, strand of Desire…
Stretches all winter’s night long
Here, strand of longing…
Stretches all four seasons
Here, strand of waiting…
Ties the dawn to the sunset
Here, strand of Sadness…
Tear rolls inside, glittering.
After all the long cold-blooded expedition
Women’s love
War’s ammunition
All join the battle.
Please offer Women
Peace!
***
Concern
The paltry haughty self-declared towering mountains
The arrogant stagnant ponds that always saturate itself
The rusty railroads of positioned thinking
The dogmatic golden fillets that self-applied to the head as an archetype.
The dignity aligned in uniforms.
The fingerprints of bland congruent ego…
Creative wind carries strange heroic air
Fear of blowing in despair in the middle of tedious desert.
***
Women
Is Water
Women push
The career boat of men
To the other side – aspiration.
Is Water
Women press
The career boat of men
Sink to the ocean floor of desperate.
Is Water
Women, on their own, initiate the tides
For themselves and for each other.
Is Water
Endless subterranean water women
Love for her child flows till eternity.
***
Longing for Mother
I weave every single day since you gone
Into an orphanage tunic.
Mother!
I swim through
Thirty-six river docks
Every time the women’s heart is torn apart
Mother raised me up
Let’s go home!
You made my scar healed.
Scarred like small pox complication
Remnant of naïve.
You taught me ninety-nine good things
Unable to teach the one-hundredth
Women’s heart
Every departure… comes a lost!
***
Haunt
Fear …
His soul is punctual to earth’s cycle
Torn and faded daily cycle.
Fear…
Loving heart
He modified and applied on thirsty tides.
Fear…
My soul
River bank of a flood-recede season
Dreams a strange foot
Suck the passionate alluvial.
Fear…
My heart – a wild horse
Did not learn by heart
Post trot… Love!
***
Like the Wind
Please don’t compare the sun
To the light that halfheartedly shine on existence.
Please don’t compare the moon
To the just-a-borrowed light.
Please don’t compare the ocean
To the unfaithful, erratic black and white.
Please don’t compare the high mountains
To the life’s landslide of rain and flood.
My love – A Fine wind
Four seasons, all directions
Blow to each other!
***
Awaken
I sleep well
Ancient primitive grand forest holds a black dream.
I sleep well
Tiger lies in iron cage
Claws soft as velvet, fangs slippery as silk.
I sleep a deep sleep
Pond upon mountain…
Drinks up the whole sky.
Why did you dig up coal seam?
Let the old far fantasy vanish?
Why sharpen fang and claw
Roaming breath-taking jungle king?
Why stir up the pond with the thrown rock
Break thousand smug pieces of moon?
***
Angel
Flower of love
Mother – Father gave me
Buds out five blossomed petal tips
Foolishly poor penmanship
Painstaking wise
Practice writing on every page of LIFE notebook.
Whose hand that built this temple
Whose hand that burned this temple
Rolls fingerprints for identity in the file of humankind.
Upside down among misery life
Flip the hand that trades the right and wrong
Shake hand to resolve
Every hatred on earth.
Callous hand
Soft flimsy hand
Introduces itself the fire and ice destinies.
When down and out
Clasp two hands and bow the four cardinal directions
The hand becomes emissary
Builds a bridge between Yin – Yang.
Among the uncertainty
Two hands of the mortals swim themselves through Suffering
No magic granted, but Buddha leads the way.
_________________
Translated into English by Vo Hoang Long
