mai trung tinh/ prose poems
dai nam van hien books, australia 2914
lines of birthday
+ new year eve
poems by mai trung tinh
TRANSLATED BY DAM XUAN CAN
mai trung tinh
[ i.e. nguyễn thiệu hùng 1937- maryland 2002]
(photo (saigon 1967): internet)
1. LINES OF BIRTHDAY
1
Day follows night as one coin piles on another
And I, a seasoned player, am ready to bet all I have
Knowing any refusal is untimely I stay until the very end
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 race 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 sudden, one evening there rose a storm
All the ill wind blew coldly around the hall of splendor
The plaster is steady 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
Eargely I throw myself again in the game
As I look up at the eternal coin thrower
My blood freezes
Sweating coldly, 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. A leaf rises up and falls down, but at
the end is flown away all the same. The first sorrow I have cherished since I turned a young man become an eternal wound. Perhaps I will have to take it as hereditary sickness. Time and again, I shudder as if it sears my flesh. I can sit in wait for a brighter day, my body ageing, my veins greening. This will 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 flower in the garden of my memory turn away. I call loudly, but the echo loses itself in eternity until it fingers around the old stone you once
sat on. You have left and I cannot summon you back. The young saplings planted in rows will grow till they becomes trees of farewell. You have risen up like a phoenix, and I have been carried by a torrent, never able to turn back to follow your endless fight. 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 feel my own blood streaming.
Looking at my hands I stretch the fingers to see if I am still alive.
What I will do, what will I have to do?
How long will I be, and what will become of me ?
2. NEW YEAR EVE
New Year' s Eve and a sadness tingles myself. I put on a winte coat, go to a small shop, hide in a quiet corner, and light a cigarette. Time is slow and monotones 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 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 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 illusion of repose.
Since time unknown my heart has been like a fall the sound of which will 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 make you loveller. 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, I run out, into the spreading darkness. Awkwardly, I brush against a decrepit, white haired woman who is begging for her day-to-day existence ...
mai trung tinh
(p.4- 7 MAI TRUNG TINH/ PROSE POEMS)
about the poet
Born Hanoi 1937. Educated Chu Van An High School,
and Faculty of Letters, Saigon. Is by many considered
to be one of the most distinguished poets of the free
verse movement in Vietnam.
Published 3 books of poems from 1900 to 1869. His
BEYOND EDEN (1962) and PROSE POEMS (1969)
have been widely acclaimed .
Won National Literature in Poetry . (1960-1961.)
Taught literature at Cao Thang High School, Saigon
(1958- 1963.)
At the time of this publication he was serving as a
Pschywar officer in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.
Died Maryland 2002.
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