Signed Hồng Lĩnh — Đinh Nho Tiêu, these texts were written between Paris, Laos and Việt Nam, from 1986 until his first return to the country after more than half a century of absence. They are presented here in an English translation, together with their original title.
I
Losing a homelandLạc mất một quê hương
Paris · 1998
The cry of a man who became, without ever having left, an eternal exile.
Not once have I left,
why does my heart tell me that to leave is to say farewell?
Not once have I spoken of separation,
why promise myself to return one day?
Not once have I come back to my country,
into the heart of a homeland in turmoil.
Not once have I returned to Huế,
to sit beneath the Thiên Mụ pagoda and weep over its ruins…
No! I see only the yellow leaves falling on the foreign land,
the eyes of my old mother, clouded, swollen with tears and waiting.
No! I see only my soul drowned in sorrow at each return of spring,
weeping in silence beside the yellow flowers.
No! On the graves of exile I see
only so many withered dreams of returning to the homeland.
I did not leave!!! Why have I suddenly become a man from elsewhere?
I did not return!!! Why does it seem I have lost a homeland?
O homeland!!! I let my tears flow, I weep in secret
over a whole life adrift in wandering.
Skin wrinkled, eyes dim, hair already turning white,
I long to return, to die within my homeland.
I wait… for so many years I have waited —
half a life, or an entire existence wandering without end!!!!
Đinh Nho Tiêu — Paris, 1998
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II
Longing for springHoài Xuân
Paris · 1986
The first of the poems of exile, where the foreign seasons rekindle the memory of home.
How many springs does a man's life hold?
The scent of spring is not yet gone, and already the love of spring fades.
The spring rain glides, light, over the forest,
the spring wind roams after the butterflies.
Spring returns to these places,
but the garden has already changed its leaves and branches so many times.
The dream of spring trembles, barely glimpsed,
the spring flower has paled, the branch remains unfinished.
The fair Lady Spring, in the land of exile, is bewildered:
she longs for spring, and the old dreams cruelly pass with the years……
Hồng Lĩnh — Đinh Nho Tiêu — Paris, 1986
In the autumn garden, a drop of yellowed sunlight,
the autumn mist withers, unsettling grass and trees.
The autumn wind, icy, pierces the thin shoulder,
the autumn rain trickles down, birds fly to the edge of the sky.
The autumn moon, silent, stirs the heart,
the autumn clouds drift, calling the man of wind and rain.
The autumn leaves, layer upon layer, sway,
the autumn sun piles up, the scattered clouds a mournful grey.
The love of autumn stretches endlessly through the soul,
at the waning of autumn, I see only the leaves still falling.
The autumn forest follows the shadow of the birds of the sky;
in the longing of autumn, suddenly the memory of someone returns to me, at autumn's end…
Hồng Lĩnh — Đinh Nho Tiêu — Paris, late autumn, 29.10.1992
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III
At the end of a winter, the snow still fallsCuối một muà đông, Tuyết vẫn bay
Paris · late winter, March 1993
Even to the tears of the lost birds weeping for their land.
At the end of a winter, the snow still falls,
the rows of bare trees beneath the gaunt pines.
The wind returns, biting, in an eternal longing,
the confidences of so many days breathe out a bitterness.
Immense, the white snow covers the misted hill,
indistinct, it flutters and falls at the roadside.
Each step I take rings out like a breaking,
the surface of the lake, seized by frost, is hard as a mirror.
A few seabirds, gone astray, are there,
wings spread, wavering against the wind,
seeking their reflection to find again the salt sea,
which shines, imprinting its image across all the sky.
Pensive, I stop and lend an ear:
it is the cry of the birds that have lost the way home.
It seems to me I hear, softly, falling on the snow,
the very tears of the beasts, weeping for their country.
Hồng Lĩnh — Đinh Nho Tiêu — Paris, 1993
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IV
The one who went off to who knows what horizonNgười đi biền biệt phương nao
Spring Quý Dậu · Paris · 1993
And the vow never to betray the homeland.
The one who went off, to who knows what horizon —
o my love! where once we were, the moon and the stars have yellowed.
The rain falls, tears of the beloved,
or else it is the flood of weeping, distraught, upon the pillow.
Late in the night, I wake, my soul troubled,
tenderness, tenderness, memory, memory — nothing stops this sorrow.
Alas! the old dreams, the first love,
I trace back the thread of the past to the faded hair.
We meet again, sealing our vows in the dream —
come, my love! this little light love has already withered.
Or else these are the tears of the fair one,
who once wept breathlessly over love forever.
Far from the lonely landing,
distraught, I glimpse a hundred and a hundred memories and regrets.
I set off to gather dreams in the long night,
you go home to fold away your faded, wasted tenderness.
Time, the bitter fruit of the pass of clouds,
we exchange a longing without respite, a tempest in the heart.
When the wind blows into the vastness,
the love we thought was dead will float, adrift.
Hồng Lĩnh — Đinh Nho Tiêu — Paris, 1993
I dream of no paradise,
I beg for no peaceful nirvana.
I ask only, my whole life, to be a man —
and never to fail the oath once made to the homeland.
Hồng Lĩnh — Đinh Nho Tiêu — Spring Quý Dậu, 1993
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V
A New Year's Eve in a foreign landMột tối Giao Thừa trên xứ lạ
Paris · 1990
Tết far from home, and the mother who, every year, still lights the fire.
A New Year's Eve in a foreign land,
half a life rolled across distant countries.
Out there, mist and snow fall, indifferent,
here, in the icy cold, I welcome the spring.
I taste the cup of spring wine, its savour is flat,
the wood in the hearth breathes out a scent of long ago.
Mother! you burn the leaves of ten old winters
to warm the soul of your son in the far-off land.
I believe my soul is drunk in a long dream:
step by step I return, in time to welcome the spring.
In the great garden, beside the pot of cakes,
Mother, every year, stirs the glowing fire.
The smoke of firecrackers from some house, the wind carries it,
gongs and drums ring out, announcing the turning of the year.
Mother believes her son will not arrive in time,
she lights a stick of fragrant incense in the old house.
She listens to her son tell the tale of the wanderer,
I listen to Mother, each night, watching for her son.
The incense smoke rises, thick, blurring the faces,
in the deserted house, the tears stream down.
For a moment, the scent of long ago — alas — dies out!!!
A whole sky of hope, too, dissolves.
Ancient scent, old dreams, vain illusion…
the old mother's tears spread with the smoke…
Hồng Lĩnh — Đinh Nho Tiêu
And its companion piece — « A spring morning, in a cold land »:
A spring morning, in a cold land,
heaven and earth have not yet opened a single fresh flower.
The mist veils, the snow covers branches and leaves,
the lamplight lights the way, in place of the silken sun.
My love! I dream of a road —
a country road under the rose-pink morning sun,
the green bamboos bend their crowns, ready to welcome you,
red firecrackers and yellow chrysanthemums beneath your steps.
The village communal house hums with the Tết festival,
the sandalwood incense perfumes the whole space.
A few elders, on the ceremonial bed,
tea and new-year wine, contemplate the apricot and peach trees in bloom.
A few young village girls, shy,
let their youth blossom before the village.
Joyful, the band of children, firecrackers in hand,
and grandparents chattering — where can they be?
My love! our house is at the end of the village of « Gôi »,
beneath the row of green bamboos, near the grove of dwarf bamboo,
behind the trellis of evening flowers, the hedge of hibiscus,
a little house, a sparse rack of gourds.
The landing of Lệ Thủy saw me leave.
Forty-eight years already — what had I dreamed of long ago?
Asleep on my mother's shoulder, I knew nothing
of the foreign land nor of the tale of separation.
Light, my love, the string of Tết firecrackers,
to welcome the exile who comes home to his country.
The child who left long ago on the landing
returns today as if in the midst of a dream………
Hồng Lĩnh — Đinh Nho Tiêu — Paris, 1990
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VI
At the end of a springCuối một muà xuân
Memory of the return to Savannakhet · 1994
Beneath the yellow flower of the Mai, the homeland nestled in the hollow of the heart.
Beneath the old yellow apricot tree, the print of a footstep,
twenty years gone by, how much dust and wind.
The yellow five-petalled flower unfolds scent and colour,
blossomed at the roadside, at the end of spring.
So many springs already without return;
on returning, the wind blows, trailing and long.
I wander, step by step, in the deserted garden,
letting my soul pursue the dream to the end of passion.
Passion draws me on to the land of wandering,
to seek the yellow flower before the winter wind,
to await the colour of the new sun on a thousand foliages —
across a thousand obstacles, do you still remember me?!!!
The sky of childhood, for a moment, seems close at hand,
the wings of the butterflies of some house practise their flight.
Once the Mai bloomed in the depths of the forests —
I have gone far from it, why does the flower grow in this place?
Every house, an old tree in bloom.
When I truly think on it, it is the whole country that is in my heart,
preciously kept to warm the soul of the exile —
a moment of melancholy, oh how poignant!!!! …
Hồng Lĩnh — Đinh Nho Tiêu — Savannakhet, 1994
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VII
Both of us, together, going homeHai ta cùng về
Savannakhet, Laos · left in 1976, returned in 1994
Twenty years later, on the old quay, to find his old mother again.
After twenty years,
the storms subsided,
the sun still dries the man,
the rain falls like a cascade.
There is a foreign traveller
on the old landing of the river.
The water rises and falls as ever,
the flowers and the leaves sway.
I find my old mother again,
age has bent her life;
only then do I understand
that with waiting she has worn herself out.
The puddle at the roadside
seems to keep still
a patch of blue sky
from the days of childhood.
The town, dreary with sadness,
murmurs and laments,
I write a poem of sorrow
for the love gone amiss.
The space in the distance, deserted,
time, trailing and long —
when, my love,
shall we go home, both of us together?
Hồng Lĩnh — Đinh Nho Tiêu — Savannakhet, 1994
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VIII
A spring in the native landMùa xuân trên Quê Hương
First spring in the country · after 56 years of absence
Home at last, among the beloved places of Việt Nam, after fifty-six years.
The cup of wine on the first day of the year warms the whole heart:
at the Tràng Tiền bridge, at the Thê Húc bridge, the sun spreads, immense.
At Hoàng Mai, at Thiên Mụ, gold blazes before the gateways,
at Bích Đào, at the Temple of Literature, red in the courtyard.
Mã Yên, Bích Động — colours of mountains and waters,
the West Lake, the Lake of the Returned Sword — the gleam of a limpid mirror.
A life of wandering — joy is not yet spent
when a breath of parting, already, rekindles the longing!!!! .
Hồng Lĩnh — Đinh Nho Tiêu
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IX
Spring returnsMùa Xuân lại về
A story · the return to the land of the ancestors
A story. After more than fifty years of wandering, Hoàng at last crosses the Mekong to reach the land of his fathers, between dream and reality, on a New Year's Eve morning.
On the morning of the first day of Tết, in the province of Savannakhet, Hoàng had just crossed the threshold of his house — the old dwelling in the hamlet of the Bảo Quang pagoda — to take his first steps into the new year, a year he had awaited for nearly twenty years, like a page of his life turning at last. From the day of his departure, this little town, this landing, he had left them behind him in silence, as one flees in the heart of an upheaval — and later, thinking sometimes of all this, he wondered whether it had been but a jolt of History, for in the course of the History of a whole people, how many upheavals and changes there are.
Now that he was returning, the storms had passed; the scattered birds of the flock were finding their old nest again, and by good fortune, through all these driftings, he had kept intact a faithful heart, without blushing with shame at his return. Here, Savannakhet, town of a childhood now gone, of a time of wandering elapsed on the land of Laos. Today, this place was also the first stage of the road he took to find again the Land of the Ancestors, to find again the soil of the Homeland that, through more than fifty years of wandering in a foreign land, he was at last, truly, coming back to find.
Only two days ago, on a ferry linking the two banks of the Mekong, between Laos and Thailand, on a morning of high wind, in the panting of the boat's engine, there mingled laughter and words that one would at first have thought Lao or Thai. Once, in this trade, one never saw the shadow of a Vietnamese, for the law forbade it; and now, today, scarcely had the ferry left the quay when the laughter and the words were already ringing out, resonant, in the Vietnamese language.
The great branches of wild Mai, with their brilliantly yellow flowers, rose at the foot of the steps leading to the sanctuary, with a marvellous power of attraction. Oh! those branches of Mai of a distant childhood, absent for so many years — at each return of spring and of Tết, before this Bảo Quang pagoda, have those branches of Mai ever been missing? He stood there, transfixed, before these yellow flowers — for plants, like men, when they are transplanted to a foreign land…
Hồng Lĩnh — Đinh Nho Tiêu
X
These hedges of green bambooNhững lũy tre xanh
Hà Nội · early spring 2000 — written late March 2003
Emotion before the Mausoleum, on Ba Đình square, at the dawn of the millennium: the stone slabs, the processions of men, and the millions of souls of a people.
At the beginning of the spring of the year 2000, at the threshold of the millennium,
Under the sun of Ba Đình, in the immensity of heaven and earth,
These hedges of green bamboo, as if enfolding a whole stretch of the native Land,
These stone slabs, come from all the roads of the homeland,
Have gathered here, to build the rampart, to raise the wall
— The place where a silhouette of the century reposes.
Here are the fragrant incense sticks that are lit,
Here are the processions of men, from every region of the country,
And even the children, wandering to the four corners of the world,
Who line up in silence to enter and gather in remembrance,
Like armies filing past without a sound,
Steps of the History of long ago.
Oh!!! Millions upon millions of hearts wrung with emotion —
I am not alone in shedding tears upon these slabs of granite.
He who reposes there, peaceful as for a thousand years already,
Flickering and veiled — like History — with a distance that resurfaces.
All at once grows faint; here and there, in ranks and in waves, these men
Who lay down to build a glory,
Who followed an arm, on the road of defending and building the homeland,
Have come back here, come back here, to the tender affection of the Mother earth.
Here reposes not only He,
But also millions upon millions of souls of the Heroes in the service of the nation,
Who for a time lay down so that the country might endure in glory…
… I am the last who must leave this place — Farewell for a thousand autumns —
It seems to me I see millions of souls holding back my steps,
The living of this world, the dead of the Nine Springs, tempest and rain of tears!!!
Farewell to You for a thousand autumns, You who made a glorious history,
So that a whole people might enter, proud, into the millennium.
At the beginning of the spring of the year 2000, under the sun of Ba Đình,
In the immensity of heaven and earth, I feel my heart grow wide with the native land…
Hồng Lĩnh — Đinh Nho Tiêu · 3 a.m., late March 2003
XI
The young girl of Bến ThủyNgười con gái bến Thủy
City of Vinh · Tết of the year 2000
A fleeting encounter at the landing of Bến Thủy, around the gentle voice of the land of Nghệ Tĩnh — to the young seller of Cu-Đơ sweets.
Our story, all in a flutter,
Like a thousand buds of Peach blossom
Of a late spring.
The rhythm of river and lake carries us along;
In the turmoil, here I am, come back.
The inn on the quay, now empty, now full —
Seized with emotion in the meeting.
You say it is fate:
At Bến Thủy I met you,
sharing the peaceful voice
Of the land of Nghệ Tĩnh.
Oh! the story of the city of Vinh —
For a thousand lives I did not await it,
But your love is boundless
On this rose-pink spring morning.
I would have you take a husband
So that my heart may keep its memory;
Our story, I give back to eternity,
To the native land I entrust you,
O young girl of Bến Thủy.
Our story, all in a flutter,
Like a thousand buds of Peach blossom
Of a late spring……
Hồng Lĩnh — Đinh Nho Tiêu · « To the young girl of Bến Thủy, seller of Cu-Đơ sweets »