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THE WRITERS POST (ISSN: 1527-5467) VOLUME 13 NUMBER 1 JAN 2011 |
NGUYEN THI THANH BINH
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a poem by NGUYEN THI THANH BINH translated by Nguyen Ngoc Bich Hola, city where no birds are
found flying
Damn, I’ll have to leave again Vietnam, my Vietnam has become a reality in which golden dreams can no longer squeeze in in early morning you’re full of expectations but truth to say, all your dreams have been shot to pieces even before they can open up as if the sun is not there despite our pleas unwilling to peep out of the east me too, I have also insistently calculated this way and that when dreams whether of the day or night have all been exhausted I know, in the end you too will have to disappear all will have to take off in whichever way you can despite all the depressing risks here it seems everyone could end up bankrupt even those trusting innocent pure-hearted shades of the trees on the streets where much too many of them have been decapitated with their names long ago replaced by others well, we’ll just have to live with it no one now cares to retain another even when the latter just freshly comes back the city goes on throwing straight one after another pieces of sad rubbish at his face no way to happen smelling it without getting dizzy with the odor of night shame even the winds seem to be exhausted unwilling to escort those errors and mistakes that rubbish… piles of them from sources unknown take turn squeezing in muddy alleys and side streets of history errors and mistakes unknowingly turned into mistakes and errors mistakes and errors not deserving to be errors and mistakes what lessons now for this damn whipping rods, o why Vietnam is no longer a dream for you, brother, you, sister or younger ones who have been growing young rice plant fields why should the patriotism of a small country’s citizen must draw down its eyelids in the face of treason yes, listen, listen to the waterfall tumbling down on the cascading stream listen to the horses neighing pleading for freely speeding forward please, o please do not go on playing blindman’s game when a tiny speck of dust falls into and obstructs this century likely it will fly away by itself for don’t we all need these flying away occasions, do we? so that we can turn and turn fly away together with the rest of mankind turn and toss as we land somewhat like UFOs on the information superhighway the open space of media the super… TGVs disappearing in air o what crimes has our nation committed to get back in return all these terrible remunerations… all of them in the name of this and that impossible to figure out in whose name or in which cause why for once can’t we do it in the name of man even though man here is very small indeed somewhat like ants who know nothing but hang their heads down going back and forth please have pity looking at the path of Vietnamese black ants you’ll see their patient expectations the hopes of common, black-clad folks short-necked, tiny voices isn’t that true, we need to live and breathe somewhat like a man’s shape and in accordance with the mind of animals endowed with a brain true, I sometimes also wish that I have lost my brain, my memory machine my nationality, my breath even a clean wiping out of an ancestor a city, a street the homeland even o so it turns out that somewhere in our soul not anywhere else, there is a truth just like that mornings where I will sadly confess: dawns here are no longer where one finds birds chirping birdsongs echoing in the old garden lightly touching the door panels wakening the still sleepy school children of yesteryear hola, city, why did you kill all these smiles of a fresh bedewed morn is that right, that the birds have gone in search of a crystal sun dome why here in our homeland / there’s no longer the warbling of a nightingale why do I come back here blowing forever flight paths where bird wings no longer flap whether visible or invisible on the bell towers in public parks on melancholy power lines with the birds silenced the teachings of Christ or Buddha suddenly get drowned out isn’t that right, when even Buddha or Christ quietly turn into fossils who can we turn to and pray? could it be that we are condemned to impotence in the hands of these bandits who are hanging by a wire unable to breathe yet they are incapable of seeing that life is gradually reaching the end of the road death o sure, they still breathe and bare their teeth like monkeys monkeys condemned to live in cages who can only make stifled noises as they go after the ripe bananas in the hands of their insensitive handler in the zoo oh, birds who have disappeared long ago why do you still leave here traces of a horizon of illusory freedoms hola, what city that I come too which is now devoid of flying birds where warblers springtime is gone for good birds that roam the vast open sky damn, I am afraid that I have to go on getting away damn damn damn to hell with this evil! showing their necks / baring their chests / eyes piercingly open they challenge your clean cut long daggers unnamed sentences and unsentenced prisoners do they still exist, those bird songs full of folksong lyricism in each one of our Vietnamese hearts they say: “what is there in a pastoral life to rejoice about?” “Of course, that’s true,” I ask, astonished: “Then why obstruct all the paths and alleys by which I had tried to come back?” said, “to go, go away, get out of my sight. Don’t you dare to stay and cause… a smile for others.” actually, it’s to cause someone to live but how can a life be called one without a smile? for sad to say, when I leave it does not mean that I turn my back on Hue, Saigon, Hanoi, or Nha Trang the city by the sea… come to think of it, the birds don’t have anywhere that they can fit in those wolf-hearted and beastly hunters don’t easily let them thin-winged birds they can’t fill up those three-span bags when the Swiss banks are always ready to weigh down with their ill-gotten dollars when the city goes on buzzing with flies and dust, awful, terrifying dust rolling with the mouthpieces with the human-faced masks and me getting my throat rash with yelling when down there there are springs dyed yellow with each flame they just burned setting the stage for a surprise party… of smoke rising rising… calling to the horizon smoke rising instead of a flight pattern of birds for you, brother, and you sister and younger ones when you fumble your way back to the old sea o romantic salmons forever embracing each wave where they were born… From the collection Vẫn ngần ấy câu thiếu một vần(g) (“Still Those Very Same Verses Minus a Rhyme/a Halo”) Translated by Nguyễn Ngọc Bích Springfield, VA-San Antonio, TX November 2-4, 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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