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THE WRITERS POST (ISSN: 1527-5467) VOLUME 12 NUMBER 2 JAN 2010 |
NGUYEN THI THANH BINH
__________________________________________ a poem by NGUYEN THI THANH BINH translated by Nguyen Ngoc Bich A Peace banquetAwake!... Quickly, get up! Out there they are celebrating like mad, like crazy With wine made of mother’s blood—to spice the fermentation With a scrumptious spread made of father’s marrow and brother’s meat Lighted by the green of young sister’s convictions and the red of older sister’s illusions, that add to the inebriating music Peace is here! Peace is here don’t you see? Awake! … Quickly, get up! At the Peace Banquet, every guest is solemnly announced You, an officer of the puppet army You, a CIA operator As for that one over there, a reactionary The old lady there, a bourgeois comprador stingy with her donations to the Liberation Army… We’ll get a “superfull meal” that must yield to the watery “socialist” vegetable soup The menu today is a hot soup made of tears crying for loss and expectation Of each young widow, each orphan, old parents, a beggar and a streetwalker Not to mention the many dishes brought back from the Economic Zone and from God-forsaken forests and swamps On top of the live “Human Brain dish” slow-cooked in The Re-education Furnace. Peace is here! Peace is here, really? Awake!... Quickly, get up! How can we not come and partake Of this splendiferous dinner that was not announced in Full in the invitation card With its “unbeatable” desert plate: A grenade for the vanquished! Peace is here! Peace… is here, how come no one’s left? Translated from “Bua tiec hoa binh” in the poetry collection “Tron vao giac mo em” (1997) by Nguyen Ngoc Bich, 2010. The Writers Post & literature-in-translation, founded 1999, based in the US. Copyright © Nguyen Ngoc Bich & The Writers Post 2009. Copyright for the original © Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh. Nothing in this magazine may be downloaded, distributed, or reproduced without the permission of the author/ translator/ artist/ The Writers Post/ and Wordbridge magazine. Creating links to place The Writers Post or any of its pages within other framesets or in other documents is copyright violation, and is not permitted. |
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