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THE WRITERS POST (ISSN: 1527-5467) VOLUME 7 NUMBER 2 JUL 2005
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UYEN NICOLE DUONG _______________________________ FROM GULAG TO LOVE A lover's
ballad to him whose name is prisoner-of-conscience In memory of the fall of Saigon
30/4/2005: To that Vietnamese nobleman who has borne his cross, paid his
dues, for us to move on, and whom I will never meet UND In what’s left of a glimpse of life let me curl up against you facing the dying sun feeling your breath upon my hair in storytelling too sacred
to be revealed the night falls and the hours pass I turn to face you to place my lips on your telling heart and listen to its beat tell me tell me please tell me (the heartbeat of life like sounds of words and sighs too fragile to render real yet too real to surrender) It tells me of all the scars and wounds nhung la mau do thit roi... my fingertips are now confirming on your burning cells and tissues They tell me of hunger, hard labor, and torture chem tre dan go tren
ngan... my silky lips are now confirming on every breath you draw It tells me of stretched nerves, broken veins, diseases, cold,
heat, starvation, all in buried hopes Nhung la ray uoc mai ao... the vines of my arms are now confirming on your torso and rib cage They tell me of days and nights without sleep and food long
thuong quan tu om o gay mon the valleys of my hips are now confirming on your columns of bony legs They tell me of humiliation that aims to bend, when legs no
longer run and feet no longer stand Nang
vua phuc xuong chang thoi
nga ra No more warrior or nobleman No more assassin or escapist No more saint or martyr Just a being, broken, yet not broken Tram
nam trong coi nguoi ta... Solzhenitsyn’s
archipelago, your Suoi Mau All is here In silence and in one held breath You thrust secrets of human hell onto me and in me hell bears fruits then you turn toward the wall and never talk Never dream Just one more day, for the last time From gulag to love lies a thousand footsteps of pain UYEN NICOLE
DUONG November 2004 The Writers Post &
literature-in-translation, founded
1999, based in the US. Editorial
note: Works
published in this issue are simultaneously published in the printed Wordbridge magazine (ISSN: 1540-1723). Copyright
© Uyen Nicole Duong 2005. 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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