prose poems , by mai trung tĩnh [1937- Maryland, 2002] - translated by đàm xuân cận

prose poems  by  mai trung tĩnh
revised edition 2013

                                                  mai trung tĩnh

                                                   prose  poems 

                                              TRANSLATED BY ĐÀM XUÂN CẬN

                                                                          with the co-operation of THE AUTHOR
                                                                                   cover design  : CAO BÁ MINH

                                                                                                    

                                                  dai nam van hien books
                                                                                                     SAIGON 1972 
                                                               REVISED  EDITION , HCM CITY,  2014
                                  -------------------------------------------------              

                                       ABOUT THE POET 

                                Born : Hanoi 1937.   Dead :  Maryland 2002  .
                                Educated : Chu van An High School & Faculty
                                of  Letters, Saigon.
                                Is by many considered to be one of the most 
                                distingiushed poets of the free verse movement
                                in Vietnam.  
                                Published  3 books of    
                                poems from 1960 to 1969. 
                                His BEYOND EDEN [1962] & PROSE POEMS [1969] 
                                have been widely acclaimed.
                               Won National Literature Prise in Poetry [1960- 1961].
                               Taught literature at Cao Thang High School, Saigon
                               [1960- 1961]. 
                                At present serving as a Pschywar officer 
                                in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam .


                                       DAI NAM VAN HIEN BOOKS
                                       PO Box  1123 , South Vietnam.
                         
                          ----------------------------------------------

                         
                         All  rights reserved.  No part of this book may be re-
                              produced in any form without the written permission
                              of the author .  Permission is hereby granted to 
                              reviewers to quote brief passages in a revise to be       
                              printed in a magazine or newspaper.

                         THIS EDITION, JANUARY 1972.
                               Copyright by Mai Trung Tĩnh

                               REVISED EDITION 2014
                               A DAI NAM VAN HIEN BOOK 

                                          ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                                                       Contents


                          Lines on a Birthday
                          New Years' Eve
                          Episodes in a Life
                         Look Quickly Over Your  Shoulder,
                         Farewell,
                         Rain,                                     
                        The Eagle and Sleep,
                         Evening when I  Come Back,
                         The Old  Wound,
                         Hiding the Face,
                        Poem Written Towards the Year's End,
                         On the Wing of Illusion,
                         Loneliness, Day after Day,
                         When Night Fades,
                         Deliverance,
                         I Move,
                         Morning Dialogue,
                         In the City,
                         Will I Find It ?,
                         Obssession,
                         In the Twilight
                 ------------------------------------------------------------------


                         LINES ON A BIRTHDAY

                          1

                          Day follows night as one coin piles on another
                          And I,  a seasoned player, am ready to bed all I have
                          Knowing any refusal is untimely I stay until the very
                                                                                    and of the game
                          No matter what happens to my meagre self
                          My nerves and my own existence, I feel no tiredness
                          In following the throwing of the coin
                          Once I staked my lot hoping for a spectacular win
                          Yet I lost miserably

                          You have come as a rare, precious heritage
                          Which I wish to keep for myself forever
                          Just as a conscientious stone cutter fights
                                                                           time with marble
                          I devote myself to beautifying you
                          All of a sudden, one evening, there rose a storm
                          And the ill wind blew colldy around the  hall
                                                                                        of splender
                          The plaster is steadily falling off the pillars
                          Surely the wind will not fail to tear to shreds every
                                                               last carving on the wall
                          Sadly I think the end  is near
                          Eagerly I throw myself again in the game ...
                          As I look up the eternal coin thrower
                          My blood freezes
                          Sweating coldy, my nerves gone, I take a final bet
                          And ignore what comes next


                          2

     Over twenty years have flitted past as the sudden wind at  the
     turn of season.   I, a leaf, rises up and falls down, but at the
     end  is flown away  all the  same.  The first I have
     cherished since I turned a young man becomes an eternal wound
     Perhaps I will have to take it as an hereditary sickness. 
     Time and again ,  I shudder as it sears my flesh.  I can just sit in
      wait for a brighter day, my body ageing, my veins greening. This 
      go on,    I say to myself, until I fall like the dying moon.

     Today is my birthday. 
     I knock upon the soul's  door, yearning for a dialogue.  The sound
     is not cheerful, so the leaves and the flowers in the garden of my 
     memory turn away. I call loudly, but  the echo loses itself in eternity
     until it lingers around the old  stones you once sat on.  You have
     sorrow  left and I cannot summon you back. 
    The young saplings planted in  rows will grow till
     they become trees of frarewell. 
     You have risen up like a phoenix, and  I have been carried by a
     torrent, never able to turn back to follow   your endless flights.  
     Here and now I set about a futile search among nameless ruins.

                          The room is cold and dark like a cave.
                          I sit here to feed my own blood streaming
                          Looking at my hands I stretch the fingers to see if I am
                                                                                                   still alive
                          What  will I do, what will I habe to do ?
                          How long will I be, and what will become of me ?


                          NEW YEAR' S EVE


               New Year's Eve and a sadness tingles my self.  I put on a winter
               coat, go to a small shop, hide in a quite corner, and light a
               cigarette.  Time is slow and monotonous as the stifled sound  of
               water boiling in the kettle on the fire place nearby.  My thoughts are 
               suddenly turned to the day when I was young, when I fell madly
               in love with you.   In the ephemeral windy scene I take off my shoes                        and garments, sit to wait for nothing, still as a tomb.   I ask myself 
               why you have not come back for a last visit as I start a life of
               seclusion, when I am the one to hear the anguished sounds on the
               coffin   on burial day. 


               It is almost late in the night.  As for me, I am still here with lonely
               smoke languidly moving on my pale, withered visage.   I keep telling
               myself, you must come, oh yes, you must come.   I will keep myself
               waiting even if I have to spend to the last breath, even if dawn after 
               dawn, the sun will torment me with its whip of fire battering on my 
               face, and scare me back to the sad abode.  I wait for you just as I
               keep living day after day in despair.  Be kind to me, lull me into an                            allusion of repose.

              Since time unkown my heart has been like a fall the sound of which 
              still be heard years from now, so you cannot avoid  me for long. You
              have come and I look at you through a screen of smoke which only
              makes you lovelier.   In the haughty way of an aristocrat I welcome
              you into my life ... Within a minute I am inconsolable sorrow.  The
              lingering smoke has whitened your head of hair.  I now think of
              descending into the abyss muted.   Frightened, In run out, into the
              spreading darkness. Awkwardly , I brush against a decrepit, white
              haired woman who is begging for her day-to-day existence ...


              EPISODES IN A LIFE

                          1

                In the time of grief I start on a  journey to unvisited places within
                for a change.   But after many  a search I am still my old self  - a 
                wheel with its immutable spokes turning round and round with the
                passing of my days .

                          2

               The voice, once raised, becomes a curse and the laugh turns obscene.
               Shocked I slid to the terrain of silence, evaporating in solitude.

                          3

                You make your appearance in a halo. In my dusky place, on the edge
                of despair, I take it as  a signpost towards salvation.   Throwing away
                the meagre things so far collected I rush into your arms. I feel the
                honey from your lips tricle to the tip of my dried tongue.  I seek a
                refuge resting on your breasts which are to me a somnolent continent
                when the sky falls off on the cracket earth.  I gladly glide myself 
                there, conjuring with  your hair, finding an exit from time.

                          4

                Phu Tho in late afternoon is as sad as a road to the cemetery. 
                Today the race course is deserted.  Now that the winds keep
                blustering their threats the lawn lies tattered as if after a battle
                of the gladiaters. 

                I, a two year colt, already feel the hoofs tire.  I start pacing slowly,
                recalling days of glory when I gleefully screamed admist the
                cheering  of the crowd.  But now everything is gone and I am
                alone in the old places, haunted by past memories. Panic 
                stricken, I am worn out   already .Turning I perceive only
               darkness burning all around .


                 LOOK QUICKLY OVER YOUR SHOULDER

                 I,  the summer bird, stand shrieking, my tongue dried and  my  eyes
                 red with longing.  Time and again I raise my voice to ask my country
                 back,  but summer is a about to end, and the chill of autumn and
                 winter will settle in  not before long.  Day and night I picture my
                 land in its old splendor.  My wings are wind weary and my forehead                          wrinkleswith age.  The sky is blue, the cloud is white as it has been from                  time  immemorial.  Beset by despair I cast a glance around and hear the
                 cicadae crying their fill .  How long will it be like this, I sadly think :
                          
                 Dusk.  The blanket of fire over the skyline seems to start burning
                 the old citadels anew.  It is hapless to go on so I raise my wings and
                 fly away.


                 FAREWELL

                 Love, sit down before my outgoing energy runs dry.   For many years
                 I have embarked myself in business, but it has been much of  disaster.
                 What  its present status is --  This is something I can never quite make
                 out, never, never again.   I recall the first day of our love when you 
                 were young, passionate and cheerful.  I recall urging you to use powder
                 and perfume before we went out, in Springtime.

                 Suddenly I realise with no end of suffering your once gorgeous beauty
                 is no longer with you, o my love.  I myself become an actor with no one
                 to respond to me.  My smiles will not be easily spent and my circle of
                 friends will be smaller.  Sky and earth wll go on their course with flames
                 licking everything and leaving myself  scorched.

                 You are depressed about it all and I concede utter defeat.  Fear stricken
                 we cry for help but nothing comes out from the crowd except sarcastric
                 laughs.  Hepless, I start moving back to my sad abode.  Only you is still 
                 around amd already I have tired of your flabby flesh.  Taking a deep 
                 sigh I wither into my meagre self. 


                  RAIN


                 The blue sky is an ocean of silence where white sails glide happily.
                 On the land the trees flutter and dance in glee.
                 Along the margin of a see rows of houses cannot but be gay in such
                                                                                                         a company
                  When the sudden brutal wind rushes to the scene, the leaves quickly
                                                                                              signal their defeat
                 The horrible black painted boats make their appearance from afar
                 So  many good boats  hasten back but it is too late already,
                 Amid  the invasion filled with threatening souns I am a small
                                                                                  child looking at the sky
                All by myself I set out to  seek a resting place,  aching with my 
                                                                                                helplessness
                 Some bullets have raced through the air
                Aware that I cannot do anything about it, my hands in my pockets,
                                                               I wander about the hepless  land


                 NIGHT WIND

                The light is suddenly on, and the wind turns suddenly cold.   One day
                in my life takes wing and fly away.  Why do I still perservere in roaming
                as if  waiting for someone.  No, I wait for no one, I welcome no one.
                I am just an ill fated roamer. At a corner of the street that burns with
                all its  fated roamer.  At a corner of the street that burns with all its red
                and blue  signs alight, in  a night of dust and wind, I walk about in a 
                mood.  Where shall I meet you tonight?  Shall I meet you on the dancing                  floor where excitement and drinks blunt my senses ?  In that fleeting                        moment while you are half  enjoying the seetness of love.  I feel you soft               arms streaming with sadness.   Shall  I meet you in a deserted place                          where   I hear the soundless noises of nothingness?  Dear sweet little                      creature, I  must take  leave of you.

                No, no I have only myself.  My friends are so far away.  The sounds of
                fire at night are just too much for me.  Khai has gone without a word of                     farewell.  Tao has fallen in Dong Xoai , his body mutilated beyond reco-
                gnition in the foxhole.  Vu keeps going like a bird who cares more for the 
                 sky than the earth.  O the war which has been consuming me without                       respite.  Morning, afternoon, evening, I keep asking myself like this :
                I am but a small sampan caught in the cataract of destiny.

                The night walk tires me awefully.  O my life to me little remains, let me
                not  be outcast from life' s feast.

                Night is drawing to a close.  Quickening ny steps I depart after casting a                    glance at the sleepy housed town as mute as deserted tombs.


               THE EAGLE AND SLEEP

              I live as in a dream,  It lulls me with to wings of the eagle braving the
              wind so my lot is only tipsy minutes.  I turn with the invisible giant
              pivot on top of which you are  bursting with life.  With my legs  and
               hands and the brain and the heart - possessions of a miserable creature, -  
               I rise up to catch the gory.   But ghory is only fit for a crystal clear soul                      while I am buta money minded merchant towards the end of a market
               day.    No matter how strenuous my search I fall and I fall.   I keep walking                without meeting a generous customer.  On a certain day to come i will                       depart, leaving my dust to life.


              EVENING WHEN  I COME BACK


             Day ends.   Across my sky passes the cloud of melancholy.  I take the long
            to the  sad abode like a beast of fflication which has found nothing in its
            daily search

            With my two legs my two God given sticks I carry my wretched body
             back to the station where I get some miserable food to got prepared for 
            the next peformance.  I have tried more than once; Yet notwithstanding
            the outfit I remain my old self, a figure of sorrow.  I have tried to find you
             many a time,  but  hide your heart like the door to a rare, precious 
            heritage so the visitor which I am loses heart in the red morass of evening.

            In the sad , dreary days I set out searching medecine or begging pity from
            the crowd.  But I went forth in the dead of winter when snow turned to
            ice and the fire kept flickering  I have had only seen inclement weather -                 Sadly I feel my veins streaming down and I cast a glance at nothingless                   which brings to my eyes.

            The sky is low on my head like a lid, a giant lid nothing will ever pierce.  
            Surely it will not disintegrate under the blows from  my hands which
            are short and frail.

            Now the abode is within my sight.  Streching my hands like two oars, I 
            pace slowly at the mercy of the wind coming from behind .


            THE OLD WOUND

           One day in city I heard the cries screeching from every direction, 
           wounding me to the depths of my being.  I turn my face skyward, blue
           and mute like the wide opened eye bearing witness to my long exile.  In 
           convulsions I recall you.  Quickly  I take ny usual way back to where my                  poor soul may have some rest.  But I find only strangers.   Wall and trees               begin to roam,  blocking my way.  In despair I search my soul our image
          for solace.   I find to my aching surprise there is no trace left.  And, 
          have to brave the cold autumnal winds tearing at my soul, carrying away
          the few fallen leaves on your old path : I say to myself I alone have to care             for my thoughts of nothing and the passage of time.  I tell you I will be
          stoic like Sisyphus.  Nothing will bring tears to me, my blind pride in
          my ego I will always treasure .  I have to finish the way where I have
          shone bright within myself.   But I was wrong : the cruel darkness did 
          not fail to write its message of destruction.  So you no longer blessed my                 faithful love.  Something was wrong somewhere that I could not change.                Holding back my tears I found your arms loosening and you were about to               leave me.  Because I lost I lost all I had.   Upon awakening my scattered                  brain, I spend day after day, sculturing a wreath for my former self filled                  with incense.

          Dusk suddenly falls on the  empty city.

          Stricken with fear I walk home to bandage the old wound which starts                       tormenting me again.


          HIDING THE FACE


          In the howling storm which besets this century I am reduced to a fright
          sickened beast not knowing where to  exist.  I hide myself in a place of
         silence.  I move among the dumb, dark things till a day become a stream                   flowing in the darkness of destiny.  In the good, God given moments I                      imagine basking in warm sunlight.  Awakened, I find flames licking all                      around, so I retreat again further South ...


     POEM WRITTEN TOWARDS YEAR' S END

    For Love

  Twilight , I walk the spacious roads of youthful days in the shadow of the night and the sweet scent of your floating hair.   I have never loved   you more than in these days of despair.  Love is poison, but I still sink my teeth in it so that my tree put forth new leaves -- my body extant for over  thirty years in this world. I tell myself to forget everything, to forget all the steamy weariness in my veins and to love as when I was my teens.   In this troublesome, progress metamorphosed century I take first flatering steps with my new feet towards you to see the awakening of the flora' s soul and  your breathing as meek and gentle as  a thread of sunlight.   I lean on your  shoulder as on a step of the Near Eastern ruins in wait for the impending  earthquake.  In my futile pilgraimage you are a source of grace to my  suffering soul.  I lie waiting for the coming of Truth .

        For Country

  My country has more fertilizers than it can absorb though the tillers have not           taken to ploughing and harrowing.  Remember, once the gardens and paddies         turned into a giant theatre filled with people. I, a buffalo keeper since cradle            days, have always liked to hear the cries of the young animal.  When I grew up
  I have no buffalo to sit on, waiting for the moon to rise with the wind.  In grief           I ask myself whether I am a country man, whether I am a city chap, I have not         been long enough anywhere.  The corner of blue sky where the kite used to fly,     the one I always cherished as hope, shudders with flight after flight of jet                 fighters.  I ask the mother and father of one  who has fallen in the night, and              those who never returned.  Amidst  the ruins of a dream filled youth I take to         my feet as if I were mad.   I raise my voice to make a question in the name of         my suffering country, yet I hear only sounds of fire spreading.  Well, let me sit        in a corner of the communal village house and cast a glance at the pond of the        old times.  But don't you see the water is a mute as a sepulchral blanket and the    evening air is cold with the stench arising from the battlefield ?  I wait in vain          for the bell to signal the day's end.  A fire hs burned itself at the  skyline, the             time for the killers has come.  Where will I go in my country tonight ?

  For Myself 

    Beset  by illusory pride throughout a life of chimeras I have seen myself
    through the big shade of the deep cave. Boundless desires and useless bits
    of knowledge  form the  lactern in the university -- these I want to leave on
    the side  of the road so that I may become free again.  Never learn, never 
    receive and you will have a soul simple as a stone.   Bits of knowledge 
    sacttered in my brain, gather yourself to make me a rock I may use to clear 
    the way for mankind.  As for me I only ask for a road back.  I just hear
    a bird singing, simple as truth which opens itself to you in all its simplicity.
    This evening, in storming weather, I want to depart as a pilgrim who is without
    a name, and who eagerly offers  his heart as passport for the world. Bits of
     knowledge, why don' t you gather into a rock I can lean against on the edge
    of the abyss.  The bird twitters the it flies, and I an left by myself as the weak
    sunlight in a lonely day.




  ON THE WINGS OF ILLUSION

                  1

My life drags on.  The rainy night fills people's hearts with anguished emptiness      because Winter has settled itsels in the forest of your hir the season od mist.
On the road the dusky trees  waves their bare, skeleton shaped branches which   remind us of the beggars raised arms at the bustling crossroads dat after day. .Layers of louds are enveloping the earth nad the dark sun is showering ashes 
on the crowd moving about a sea of void, heedless of the futility of its serach fo    shadowy figures.   I have moved up and down with the billow though I should       gaze for ever on hidden future the other side of the bagy.

                  2

 This country Death is often talked of I thnik of the first death which foretells           hate and even murder.  Mankind has lived under its curse since that day.   I             have done past regions infeste with holes, barricades, watch towers scattered  like tombs -- ignominious signs of the death of human expectation.  On a certain   day I will go forever just as you will not be seen walking on the autumnal path         where sweet sunlight used to flicker .   Dark nights will envelop me.  And the           deluge drums on my eyes.

        3

 In the empty journey I  still yearn for a place where I can go back one day as a        weary traveller.  I will pay a visit to childhood friends who played with me,             running on mounds of earth out in the field.   Some were dead.  Their offspring      quit the village for a trip, bringing, with them nothing but their usual anger                bequeathed by their forefathers, I feel myself old as the towering banian tree in      front of the communal village  house.

I come to the pond to look at my image which fades like ripples.  Under my frail     shadow the pebble sinks into the depths of memory.   Moving close, I wishh to        hear words of remembrance from chilhood on branches nearby.  The trees are    lifeless so the echoes have gone.   The wind trails itself around the moss cover  well, making a mocking sound.


                4

My hand withers with time so it holds nothing.  Change goes on.  Not before long   you will have to hear strange laughs in the wake of nightmares.  Within half a         minute you will find my face desolate like the newly found temples in the Near        Eastern desert.  On the nights you wake up from loneliness you will look at me, as   miserable as a mummy unable to make a bruise or break of exit for its life.
My heart lays bare the truth which makes the earth shiver with pain.  I will lie deep in  the depths of my soul and see my love for you cose away breath by breath.  Don't  noisily call my name as I am a  begger who refuses tao raise my voice again.  I  give back everything so that I may be carried on the wings of illusion


 LONELINESS, DAY AFTER DAY  


  I learn with grief you have no thought of me even once.   You keep your silence a time flits past and causes me so many sorrows.   I am a victim of mockery day and night.  Now I know I am the one to have the tree of grief gorw no matter how many hopes I cherish every morning.   My last friend in life are a wild tree  branch and poisonous fruit.  Even the deers ald lowly plants leave me anguished the tattered soul of  the forest.  Every  cell of the scented pollen - your hair of the olden times  - turns a messenger bird which breathes life to this universe.  But life is harsh and blind enough to scare the bird away.   It cries for help then
flies away and my green spring is no more.

Heavy on my shoulder is the weariness of a bust condemned the vain labour of   counting catalysmic changes ages ago.  At a desperate moment, I broke away to   join a party of South Pole explorers.

   I must leave you in search of a new world.  I will confine myself in the most secluded area with my utter loneliness.  Among the leaves bathed in bliss I wake up with grass sprouting from my body nad think they are ominous of my lot. Frightened I find a way out but all exists are blocked and threatening beasts are let loose, showing their teeth.   Only the wind is free so I ask it for help.

But I slump into reality again, sweating profusely.  Wounded, the winged space       falls down to ask for a healing hand.  No one is at hand so I must give care    I watch my own feeble breathing, lost in the illusion of receiving gifts from friends. O my love, my sacred angell I am like a smouldering fire following its  bright burning.  Take away the last heat with your sweet hand, just as a rain  the hot sun.


     WHEN NIGHT FADES

                1

    Banks of clouds hasten to hide the blue sky like huge pieces of black wood.
    Evening I wake up.  In the flickering light I glide as a germ like incurable 
    sorrow.  The sun train temporarily to spit out its sparkles of anger. I see
    myself as a merchant who needs to metamorphose due to the unrelentless
    watch of days and nights.


                2

I carry within myself the seeds of my own disintegration.  The evening rain falls to alleviate my chagrin.  I want to penetrate the depths of my weary soul.   Drop after rop of water falls monotonously on the deserted step like the tick of the clock of the Hall, eternal reminder of my damned lot.  I sit in silence watching sorrow grow, then paddle myself out of darkness with my two oar like hands. I raised my hand in exasperation .  It hits the surrounding fence  and my heart is sinking.


                3

   My heart is an empty vase. I roam ever many places to pluck flowers to put
   in it.  They wither.

                4  

I live as a stranger no one can meet.  Poeple see me without the faintest reco-
gnition.   I remain  a shape of darkness which propels itself forwards indefinitely    I arm myself with the rhythmic breath of the microbes swimming in my brain.  I take the traces left by my soul as vestiges of defeat.   Destiny rages in silence  and lies heavy on thge shoulder of the victim which I am.  Yet, I prentend to   be an unconcerned fellow, ignoring the hammer blows of the judge.


                5

 Fearing the rising sun will prise out my secrets I turn into a nightjar. Over a sleepy scene I slid out as a shadow to have a few more minutes of rapture. 
With acute pain I realise it will not be long befoe I must return to my abode, and the wicked light begins toying with each tree on my way back.  Shaken badly, I know  I have to expose more of myself with each passing day .


     DELIVERANCE


     I leave behind all I have on me before I depart.   Because life is a limitless race     course.   God is the only spectator who enjoys the shabby scene of horses             strughling with each other to get out.   We set out for an indefinite race until the     end of the time, an a road infested with holes, barbed wire rolls, misery laden         trees and leaves and flowers are but a myriad of symbols of sorrow.  The                 pebblesand stones  are balls of fire to burn the ffet of runners.  I have run so I       have  blisters on my feet.

   With each passing day I know I am only a creature thrown in this monstrous         world.   One morning I frighteningly set out to fetch the comrades  But I meet no    one so I become an almighty god.  Accordingly I decide on an endless journey        lest I step to see the world as a forest full of mysterious fruits I must refuse.


     I MOVE


   Loneliness glides after me like a strange, sickly foot.  I drift on day after day.  I       strain my eyes to look up and down to notice myself in its pitiful march.  To flee     sadness my invisible self will go past planets,  leaving behind millions of bits of     space.  My eyes ache.

     Tomorrow I will leave my country, my parents, and my home place.  What ar    they worth to  me, a house and some figures ?  Do you want me to bring anything  for you ? Voices rises up unto indeterminate space.  The giant arrow with me          soars off into space in a journey into the void.  The time of departure is here.  

     Mother don' t you weep. Brothers, don't bother to se me off.

   Silence becomes a thick wall which blots out thousnads of years.  All of a sudden I wake up only to see God's wild wrath and rain battering on the wretched prisoner. Over the misty field I am a bird with badly bruised wings.

     In the shadow of destiny I hve the eyes of a frightened bat.  What else can I hope for ?  I raise my wide wings and throw myself into mute reality .



      MORNING DIALOGUE


    - Man of century of griefs and sins, what will you do today ?
    - Don't ask because I have never thought about that.
    - Why do you always lie on that small, disordered bed a soon as night falls ?
    - Whether it's day, whether it's afternoon, whether it's night, does it matter ?
     - Why don't you sleep eternally, just as saints do ?
    - I hate it as much as you do.  Well, I' ll get up, wash my face and have breakfast       as usual.  And if this is feasible I will go to a class to have a look at the                    uniformed children, as hapless as the orphans waiting to be given something,
     Or, I will roam the streets like an old horse among silly creatures people are,
     I will work just as I live ...
    - We two have decided to part after a few days of ecstasy
   - Do you still recall her eyes, her lips, her brow? 
    - Only, if I can forget !  Unconsciously I often weep .
   - When will you forget it altogether ?
   - Maybe never, never ...
   - What do you expect from this life ?
   - Just as day comes and goes, I have no time for expectation.
   - But you live but once
   -  I come and I go once only, what shall I bring with me ? Even a word, once               spoken, will never heard of again .
   - Do you resent happiness that muh ? Everyone longs for it  and you need not be  an exception.
  - You are hopelessly wrong.  I have lived under its curse year after year.  Why ?     My answer is simple : happiness is never with me.   - So what will you do ?
     - Tell me .
   
    The voice is out. It is morning and I go out in the yard.  The sun is high. Through  the shutters are a myriad of miracle infected dust grains. 


    IN THE CITY


   Evening falls over the sluggish  water under the bridge across a quiet river. 
The sky shakes off its make up  and darkness licks into its bare face.   Whom am Invaguely waiting for ? I must come back to the city quickly at the urge
of a vague train's tooting.  This evening I go to welcome a wanderer back.  With the city behind me,the sooty smoke will not be able to reach.  The faces of the passers by will not be dirtied.  In think I will be drunk tonight with the old friend. Or I will reproachfully matter for him ? Childhood years have gone forever since the day he departed.  In this encounter both of us have frown older like two dying trees.  But I will hold him in my two arms at midnight, in the wake of a sweet dream full of chidhood memories. 

  The engine has stopped, the giant beast lies exhausted  after a tiring chase.  I get   myself prepared, strining my senses in expectation.  But no friend comes, the       station yard grows wider and wider, the train lines blur and the huge animal             bursts into tears.   I only find beide me the married woman.  I often meet when      night falls in the garden at the back of the house.  She quickly turns and goes          back to the city.  I walk after her, intending to ask the reason of her being here.       She remains silent and I start talking harshly.  Suddenly, a nearby human voice reminds me that my friend accompanying is bidding farewell.

   Now that I am in front of the exhibition hall it is night already .



    WILL I FIND IT ?

 I watch life streaming and man's breathing weakening.  In a desperate minute I want to go to restful place, among moss covered citadels and the old narrow river endlessly singing the praises of the past.  With the murmuring field flowers or the cracks on the stone walls I will carve for me a seperate world, meek and true to my soul.  Or I will feed me with the soft chanting of time in a graden in the Middle Age castle, leaving out the wicked thoughts of mankind.  I open the door of my room, casting a glance at the small road winding to a remote area.  Then my soul is a clear mirror reflecting the shapes and hues of nature.  I lose myself in the melodious music when morning sunlight frolic on the beds of grass.  Like a free thread of silk, I realx. But the past is still a mist shrouded road, a black blanket enveloping the weary traveller in his endless torment.  Faces vanish one by one.  I am condemned to walking  along the row of old pine trees all my life, hearing the willows morning the dead.  And reality raises high its bare, tattered hands, day nad night I move on the edge of the abyss, looking at the thundering cataracts, feeling tipsy and annoyed.  As I look far, future in throwing heaps of material by its huge, opened wings.  My ten badly bruised falls in the garden at the back of the house.  She quickly turns an goes back to the city.  I walk after her, intending to ask the reason of her being hers.  She remains silent and I start talking harshly.  Suddenly, a nearby human voice reminds me that my friend accompanying is bidding farewell.
   Now that I am in front of the exhibition hall it is night already.


    OBSESSION

Leaving a world  I once know, I let loose myself in the deepening darkness for new sources of inspiration . Evening is being killed off bit by bit, each wound is reddening space.  Rows of trees raises themselves higher as if to obliterate the bleeding veins.  In the agony of the burning sun, birds are rejoining their nests, striking  strange note in the sounds of drums and trumpets which signal the hour of remembrance.  O dear, never think of a marble temple at the end of the road, the eternal resting place of the soul, or a station for the train after its year long voyage.  I must depart like the earth.

    Look at the planets orbiting around the sun.  Moening, it masquerades as a great  director and  evening goes behind the curtain.  On the stage we put on an old show :  I look at myself and you do the same.  Meanwhile, the controller docilely raises his  two hands to tell this person to stop or to switch on the green light for others.  I  have always hd my heart of a citizen of a small, weak country.    The monstrous   world threatens me, an unlucly person who has  a sweet mother and a haughty  father

  I tell myself not to return to the house at the end of a hamlet off the road where my  mother has devoted all her life to her son.  I walk on this boulevard, watching  evening hide to her son.  I walk on this boulevard, watching evening hide among the  dark trees which are but guards of a prisonner.  the newly burned lamps look like  the lifeless eyes of a poor moribund person .  Your image appears quickly  as if  anticipating the evening will blot out everything.  I keep  on walking and walking untill I become one with the night which answers the calls of the wandering ghosts   and devils. The shameless Moon has risen behind the immovable building to count  every breath of my soul in a horrible place of exile.

  I must bid farawell to all, even to the void, so that I will  not see another dawn      which reddens your cheeks and lips.  Imustt leave you, my eternal love who has    visited primeval gardens.  You invited me to eat the forbidden fruit and we were  damned forever.

 Darkness has settled itself on my lips, the  broken steps of the royal palace of old.  None will pay me a visit, a sinking pillar a withered branch of tree.


                                               IN THE TWILIGHT

             1

      A weary day, I am  a curious man wanting to fathom the breathes of the passers by  in the street.  Evening falls, the bell sounds are lost in the air.    The remaining light  is reddening the sky like a piece of cloth which will roll on itself at the sound of a  horn.  Is there any way for anything to escape ?  I walk, the echoes from afar are  urging me to come home.  Tonight I will give back the dreams of youres.  Many a   time I have been witnessing sad parting, each minute is a fallen drop of tear n the  small tomb.  Space cries for a prey, and lays down its trap once and for all.  I start  running and my face withers like the wind which is withdrawing from your field of fertility.

            2

      Memory piles up on memory.  My mind is an unchanged realm.  I tell myself
I must  believe others' words so when I leave you at nightfall I still see you combing your  hair in my mind, caress your faces of my dream.  In tranquil ecstasy I hide in the   deep red rose, the lips of my loved one leaving aside all threats of the day to come.  But the rose will soon be a thing past.  You  wander in the dark and my love is  dying.   I roam the big sky as a strange bir which flies to distant regions for fear of   being tracked down by the human species.  Badly hurted by so many calamities, the   bird moves back to a somber corner of the world.

            3
    Winter is an age old dark sun .  An frightening eye moves about the trees in the old, deserted house and slights on me.  No exit.  I slumber in the depths of Fancy.  In that  immutable world, I find myself lying amidst a talking nature.  I ask the young burds if they pity me and they nod, wining their eyes.  It seems mankind does not know how to weep as around me are enchnting trees and flowers and  space is filled with music.  One day, the birth cry is heard  again and I take hold of darkness, screaming has caused many  wound to my body.  I grow up in illusion.  I am but a silly chap who sitting by himself in the twilight, sees his loved ones withdrawing farther and farther .

            4

      All my life I have been searching the lost sweet voice.  It has gone with the birds to a  place no one remembers?  I suddenly find myself talking a strange language.  What  I say none will ever understand.  On the edge of the abyss I pianfully call my mates  but no one bothers to hear an innocent  child's sincere words.  Oh yes, I have the  visage of a dumb man condemned to the vain labour of keeping a secret.  But no  secret will remain hidden for long.  It will be as transparent  as sunlight.  Even you,   the source of my love, why do you not understand that the words of love we once  exhanged in the garden of Eden will have ta fade with the odor of the apples and  grapes.  Once fallen, the apple becomes poison.  Even you are estranged.  I turn to look t your eyes of innocence, the glowing pearls the world treasures,   But I do not  have enough sweet words to praise our love any more.  It is dead as the broken rubies scattered at my feet.   My face withers and I dare not hold you in  my arms               any longer.  On the earth rages a fire which consumes me and the dream pearls.

Don't look at me, dearest love ! I am cold like a night in the desert, and as disconsolate as ruined, forsaken citadels .
            []

        poems by mai trung tĩnh
    translated by đàm xuân cận