|
PHAN
XUAN SINH
_______________________________
DRINKING
WITH A NORTH VIETNAMESE SOLDIER
Transl. By Kevin Bowen & Nguyen
Ba Chung
Pour
me another drink, buddy
This
is an occasion I'd like to savor
Let’s
not think about tomorrow
Forget
tomorrow, let's enjoy this moment/today
What
soldiers aren't frightened at the moment of battle
Some
pee in their pants
Like
you I have a young sweet heart/girl friend
Eying
anxiously at the gate at home
Death
or life is an intractable disease
It
isn’t easy to escape one's lot
We
soldiers today carry no hatred
Friends or enemies there aren’t
any line
Let’s
drink. Leave all problems behind
We
might even have a couple more rounds if we could
Why
do we have to play the game of blood
to
give water to the seeds of hate
Fie!
I am sick of all these nonsense tricks
Playing games that we both lose
Your
sweat heart lives far away in the north
Is
she now busily hiding from the falling bombs
or
anxiously eyeing the southern front
fearing
her lover would return a martyr
And
she will learn to forget, like so many things
love
has to be treated like an ornament
even if one/she has to lie to admit it
This
round of drinking today, I'll have to get drunk, buddy so that in that stupor
we don't have to see each other as
enemies.
WAITING FOR
SPRING
BY THE ROADSIDE
Transl. By Kevin Bowen & Nguyen
Ba Chung
By
the side of the road, I stand, waiting for spring
In
a world upside down, churning with sorrows
From
what's left, can we give each other enough space
like the vastness of the sky
that never ends
The
street is now completely deserted
Spring
hasn’t come but there's the moon
I
do not know where I will go next
The moonlit path is buried deep in
the snow
Leaning
against a corner I can see
I
am swimming in a sea of thirsts
Here
comes the spring. Should I shout
Or
turn my back, hiding behind a shrub.
LIVING
LIFE A MISTY VAPOR
Transl. By Kevin Bowen &
Nguyen Ba Chung
Blasts
of hurricanes shook the earth
And
I a small bird losing/flailing its way
Death
specter came near and quick
How
many mountains could an ant climb?
Rifles
and butts, sweat and despair
A
world darkened by fits of terror
Arrests
and prisons, roads and dead ends
How many frontier passes
without/
[I didn't leave] a footprint?
What
voice I still hear now, midnight?
What
wailings of ghosts still ring my ears?
The
price of clarity is immense sadness
Could I mend, even a bit, the
old wounds?
In
the new land, my hair is turning white
The
old village roofs disappear in the distant mist
A
life half drawn of a bad lot
The other half lives with the
old nightmares
Is
there a home the old bird could return
Or
has it been lost to the myth of time
And
I condemned to relive the broken past
Living
life a misty vapor.
PHAN XUAN SINH
· THE WRITERS POST (ISSN: 1527-5467),
the magazine of Literature & Literature-in-translation.
VOLUME 7 ISSUE 1 JAN 2005
Editorial note: Works published in this issue may be
simultaneously published in the printed Wordbridge Magazine Issue 6 January
2005 (ISSN: 1540-1723).
Copyright © Phan Xuan Sinh & The Writers Post 1999-2005.
Nothing in this issue 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.
Return to Contents
HOME
|