voices from vietnam : tran thi tue mai + the phong+ van nguyen duong - TENGGARA 6

TENGGARA 6-  Dept. of English-
Univ of Malaya - Kuala Lumpur
             Malaysia


                           Tran Thi Tue Mai

                                                                                       Translated  by
                                                                                       Dam Xuan Can

                                                                      

                                                                                                   TRAN THI TUE MAI [ 1923- 1982]                                                        
                                            Way to look at things of dawn

Here I am with the long nigh
 Of days in the past and the future

The late carriage hastily hide farewell to the sad street
The time-ground wheels still go round and round;
Lofty trees cast shadows on the road,
While the leaves are waiting for the wind, and the branches pitying the
                                                                                             leaves

Here I am with the deep night,
Bewildered with love and tormented by hate;
Nothing is left in my arms,
Spring is only a useless and bitter memory.

Here I am with the long night
With myself scattered on the open book and out in the rain-tapped yard
Embracing the flowery land
Is not enough to express my boundless and compassionate love and hope.

Here I am with the deep night,
My shoulders suddenly ache under the weight of history;
Roads, far and near, and choked with the smell of death,
Whatever the name, my country is the resting side of war,
What is left?  What is still amendable?
Thousands of eyes are watching each other with rising despair.

In the long night, here I am
Awakened within the blood -- mine and my people' s.
Ups and downs of life should not dishearten us:
We will survive, we will survive

I am still with the tender night
My arms open, I look forwards to watching things of dawn.


                                       July the twentieth *

 Nine o'clock at night;
The Faculty of Arts campus is packed as on a festival night.

I sneak in
The fire has risen high;
Shoulder to shoulder in a circle
We assemble around the fire
The fire is burning hot:
                 let us all sleep not.

Sleep not!
Sleep not!
Afyer years of intolerable ignorance
The call is thundering in every direction
Wake up,  We cannot indulge in sleep anymore.

Stand up!  March!
The turning of history is here!
We have had too much bloodshed and misery in this wretched land;
We will no longer stand such cruel humiliation
We are all children of Trưng Vương, Trần Hưng Đạo, Quang Trung,
                                                                                         Lê Lợi,

Keep on marching,  says the voice of yesterday
Clear the trail!  is todays' call

His voice resounding;
The young speaker on the platform delivers the message;
The starlight in his eyes he walks oout  to the road
Screaming in the fog and wind
The young and brave demonstrate
To wake up  the town.

Sleep not to nigh!
July the Twentieth
Sleep not to night!
Whether in the North or in the South
Let us keep up ouf anger;
Whether in the North or in the South
Let us keep up our anger;
Whether in the North or in the South
Let us hold each other's hands tightly
The hour has struck!
Wake up everybody.


*The 20th of July, 1954 was the day of the partitioning of Vietnam.

( TENGGARRA-  P. 96- 97)



               The Phong

                                                                                         Translated by
                                                                                      Dam Xuan Can

                                                            THE PHONG [ i.e. Do Manh Tuong  1932-       ]


                       What I choosr in this mad World.

I choose autumn, pine forest and sad sunshine;
I give up writing poetry
                   and will not torture myself anymore
Do me a favor, my solemn-faced and wise wife.
Say to me,
                " Burn a fire!   Hand the mosquito-net!"
 I am the voluntary slave who is fully contented.
Let us have a long sleep,
                 O wife, sons and daughters!
Tomorrow morning
                  we'll wake up early
                   set out to grow vegetables.

Outside the hedge
                 near the farm gate
We'll put up a board " Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted"
In all languahes on the world .

1964

    ( TENGGARA, 6 - p. 95)



           Van Nguyen Duong

                                                                                             Translated by
                                                                        Dam Xuan Can

                The still-remaining sadness

Give me the still-remaining  sadness
Of your pair of pearl-shaped and crystal tears:
At the bottomof the sea there are pearls
Along with mysterious eyes floating here and there
Assad as your tear-glistering face in the night life

Chaistmas night wakes our memory
With music in the background
Accompanying the worn-out song "Desperate Frontier Love"
I see your wet eyes
And crystal tears dissolve in my body
                  drops after drop of lip-burning gin
My heart bitterly grieves as in a dream
You have become tears yourself.
O my old flame, now the wife of Phiên,
The chap used to sing the song, and was always by my side
In battle on green paddies;
With his beautiful  voice he took you from ny hands.

You have moved on the dancing floor in the dim light
As on the desert of life to the waltz of the century of war,
The waltz you, Phiên and I liked so well.
You moved from country to town,
I from the partition line to the South
And your Phiên became a war casualty
We threee belong to the generation of shattered dreams

You are familiar to me one.  You are frightened
At being  exposed as a prey at the music and drinks
And teh singer's  ttaccato voice keeps ringing in your ears.
You will hild other bodies
                than that of the husband survivin g the war
Give me the still-remaining sadness
The pearl shaped eyes
And crystal tears,
I will cry for you in the days ahead
Filled with the sounds of the lean waltz of the troubled century.


                                             Autobiography

I first learned the story of my life the year I turned ten,
When I started learning the history of my country
My mother used to say,
"Long ago our predecessors founded the coiuntry of Vietnam Under
                                                                                       the Sun.
Now the sun has gone down -- but why in the East "
Then I understood and was deeply moved.
In the morning I looked at the bridge sun on the fields
Where scarecrows has been set up for some thousand years
Where black buffaloes were pulling ploughs
And the menfolk planting seedlings with their hands
For one thousand years my country was enslaved by the Chinese
For eighty years by the French,
No change whatsoever was brought about
So runs my biography to the age of ten
The story of my ten years in the darkness of eighty years!

I learnt more about my life when I was twelves,
I started missing the school beating.
Dreadful seems right under my eyes
My family fled to the coastal area leaving the beloved house behind;
The peasants rose up to fight
Vast fields were left overgrown with weeds,
I no longer heard love songs alternately exchanged in sun- drenched days.
The scarecrows were in tatters showing patches of straw and mud
Decent common folk were like scarecrows
They woke up very early in the morning to watch the situation,
At dusk they were still heading to some refuge in the hamlets.
Everywhere we find the soldiers wearing combat boots
We are with our own eyes
The stinking corpses drift to the riverside
And attached by hawks and crows,
So runs my biography at the age of twelve,
At the start of a bloody war.

With a turn of the tide life changed
Life was so sad when I was fourteen
When the comeback took place everywhere,
I returned to my old village
In the old days my beautiful three-roomed house with red tiles
Occupied a privileged spot at the end of the village
Right in front of a bamboo hedge
Now the fire of war had burned all the supporting pillars,
Even trees were mowed down, the trees with gorgeous leaves,
Weeds were growing everywhere, blocking the entrance .

   (TENGGARA 6, p. 98- 99)

                                                                       TENGGARA