Επιμέλεια παρουσίασης: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού ποιήτρια, συγγραφέας
His biography: Born 1962
Homeland: Thinh My village – Quynh Thien commune – Quynh Luu district – Nghe An province, Viet Nam
Medical Doctor of Ophthalmology. Member of Vietnamese Writers’ Association
Published literature works:
Rhodomyrtus tomentosa flowers of Moi village – Women’s Publisher 2010
White Phragmites australis of Truong Bon – Writers Association Publishing House 2015
From the sand wind region – Publisher of Vietnamese Writers’ Association 2020
“The drumbeat in night” poem published in the volume “With our eyes wide open” – West end press US publisher 2014.
His poems:
I and the shadow
(Drinking wine alone on the year end night)
I and my shadow
Drunk together for my whole lifetime
The drunken lifetime for others
Lifting up and putting down, the weary body
Drink to well understand the up and down sense
Drunk to well understand the cry and laugh
What a fun with lots of games
My duty is to drink, the shadow is to be drunk
Wine is sweet – life is spicy
Sweet and spicy, spicy and sweet, still drunk, the drunk
I and the shadow- the shadow and I
Drunk in each other for good sleep at night.
Rhodomyrtus tomentosa flowers in Moi village
Purple color of rhodomyrtus tomentosa flowers, the flowers in Moi village
The flower color of a confused time
The age of hide-seek games, I found you but didn’t dare to call
Pretended to search, pretende to be dull
Purple color of rhodomyrtus tomentosa flowers, the chess position
I hurrily leaf with unlucky verses
Maybe the flowers were sad and then angry
But is there any happiness that is not salty?
Purple color of rhodomyrtus tomentosa flowers, the late afternoons
The heavy debt of living made me become guilty
Now I’m looking for the flowers
Back to the source to the roots
Here are the rhodomyrtus tomentosa petals of Moi village
New roads have been constructed in factories
Looking for the flowers that confused in my heart
Where is purple color of rhodomyrtus tomentosa flowers, where are the past hide-seek games
Overthere are the petals full of dreams
But not big enough to cover you
So that I can be rejuvenated in searching again, rejuvenated to be dull again
The petals are burning with verses!
To miss the rock
Why would you turn into the rock?
So that the blind lover is hard to find you
From Thung Quan – to Hoc Tro cave
Cannot see you!
The bare rock in fairyland
You made an appointment, why didn’t you come
So this cup I drink up with the moon
The Moon Boy – Jade rabbit become in pair
I and the loneliness turned into a rock
You ever have cried
But the stream of tears mingled with mother’s milk
Raising our homeland for the time of torn bullets
Up to now the river dawns
The rock is still managed,
It is ripened itself!
From my heart
I,
The child of the sand wind region
Born after the flooding seasons
The sterile birthing table was the mother’s bamboo flat tray
Under the porch
I was quietly born to cry out in my father’s homeland
A diaper covered me that was torn from my mother’s old shirt
The loving mother
My mother’s lullabies
Were raised from the lullabies of the virgin
The words tied in a basket of betel nut, areca palm, sunshine-wind
Sand and dust of the time, Mai Giang, wash off
I grew up from there
Met the red sun: sweet folk songs
What a beautiful childhood in school
Many nights I listened to my mother cried
Tears with the crescent moon by the three principles*
The rainbow tool** carried all the time, bent the hardworking
The drought has passed and it is going to a stormy day
Mother nursed me by alluvial seeds and bent her back
taking a sip in the afternoons
Handing into a pocket with a pen on the road of career
I was peaceful to step:
The life had big changes normally
The foreplay song, the love song missed the rhythm
Missed the rhythm of my life, an ordinary life cannot know
Walking in the middle of old jungle is hard to see a shadow of a tree
A faraway wind waked up the days
Bitter drops come from the heart, sweet and spicy folk songs
This land has deep intimate feelings.
Under the village bamboo ramparts – moonlight at the waterfront
Lift me up
Homeland was eroded
Before eyes I still saw
Mother’s shape – my countryside.
* The three principles of Chinese feudalism that a woman must follow: when at home, she must follow her father, when she gets married, she must follow her husband, and when her husband dies, she must follow her son.
** A bamboo transport tool placed on shoulders
The motherland
White salts crystallized from sweats and acrid sea
Forty years I urged to come back
Afternoon in Lach Bang, the sand dunes emerged at the end of the dyke
I took the sand to beg you in the sand
I was the pebble immersed in the sea of thirst
The thirst of beings included my own thirst
I’m still an inert pebble
With my motherland, the poem is still stilted
The shaped white salt that do I know
Remembered the old days in enemy time, we had to run away
Mother carried me to the motherland
The shirt gave by uncle, the potatoes shared by aunt
The incomplete family was under the bombs and bullets
The blue sky, mother’s back was bent
Early mornings carried the dew to Cong Street
At noon, covered by rain to return to Truc market
The bamboo hat covered the side of rice cakes
Yellow drops of sunshine cut across mother’s back
Many times the dyed-by-forest-leaves shirt got wet and dry
Traded and gathered some small profit
Mother wrapped back in the lyrics of fishes
Remembered in erratic weather
Mother was sick, flooding in white sky
My brothers and sisters were hungry in trembling
So grateful to uncle Suong crossed the river to bring rice for us
The smell of cooked porridge was so full for even the mice
Oh the past memory still showed up
I’m still the one who cannot escape the idiocy
Seeing the motherland breathes, I thought it was a dream
Wandering in the stepping on my old feet that had been begging for
Visiting my passed away uncle and thin aunt
Do Du is the old wharf
Lighting a candle in front of the ancestral altar
Witnessing for my heart
The water wharf of real world
The old garden
I come back to visit my old school
The betel nut was not seen anywhere
Where was the past areca roots?
The corner of the garden was the lime jar
Rolling into nostalgia
Made me heartbroken
Mother, pink lips were once upon a time.
To fun with the moon
The old beggar burned an incense on the grandchild-beggar’s grave
He silently thanked the humanity and charity
Dared to contradict with winter
Contradicted with even the highway
Dreamed of a fragrant straw
A grey smoke shape in the afternoon
Lightened in the golden moon no matter how high or low life was
Upstairs poets
Given the pure wine
Taking the falling moon
Waiting for the Epiphyllum to bloom
Pen dotting in the dew.
Drumbeats in the night
Drumbeats in the night
Splitting sleep
Rounding the egg,
A rice bowl of real world
To give a birth – to mark a death
Fragile human life
How many more?
White bones in the far fields*
Thunder booming drumbeats,
Spreading clouds
Heaven exists
Magnificent monument
Drumbeats farewell:
Going into the ancient tombs
Green grass graves
Resentful songs of gathered army.
*The poetic idea of Cao Tung (Tang)
(Translated from Vietnamese into English by Hanoi Female Translators)
