THEPHONG ' S POEMS written by LLOYD FERNANDO..

                                            THEPHONG' S POEMS
                                                written by LLOYD FERNANDO
                                               ( University of Malaya / Malaysia )        
                                                         
             THE  agony  of Vietnam has lived in the thoughts of all Wouth East Asians these twenty years or so.   We have had only the edited accounts of Allied reporters presented in the local press through which to gauge, however inadequately, the nature of the unremetting Mỹ Lai as a pointer to the mindless savagery of his prolonged conflict.    How does the common Vietnamese man or  woman see it ?   One steady, brave, lone voice - that of The Phong - comes through to give us an inkling.   There surely must be others.    Now that the nations of South East Asia are coming unsentimentally, close together, these others must also soon be heard.   Meanwhile there is
 The Phong, I am competent to make an overall assessment of The Phong's qualities as a writer, chiefly because I know his work only through English translation.   But even in translation the voice does come through.   Here is no poseur, no literary dillettante.   In The Phong's words, he writes simply because he cannot escape doing so.   He is against those who would " use literature in the same way as bar hostesses do " .   In ' Trước Mắt Nhìn  Thi Sĩ ' (Under the Poet's Eyes), he declares:

                                The million of poetry which can become
                                             directives for this nation in the future
                                 Should be preceded by the million lines of poetry
                                                  cataloguing the harsdship of to-day...

         His poetry, kie his prose, is deeply committed, passionate, and supremely just.   Even as he rails at the barbarouness of the American presence, he never forgets their true centre in Abraham Lincoln and John Fitzgerald Kennedy.   He records with baleful  eyes the havoc wreaked in the name of protection by ousiders who must genuinely have thought, at one time, they were there only to help.   The Phong 's poetry is committed poetry of the best kind.   As the vignettes succeed one another we realize we we are witnessing a convincing demonstration of how the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
       There must be something deeply wrong with the kind of help and protection which calls for 550.000 G.I's in Vietnam.   It is a strange kind of help that leads to slaughter, to the debasement of human relations, to the scotching of love and honor in everyday life.   With superhuman restraints these poems of  The Phong 's  contemplate the moral trap into which the Americans have - let us been generous - unwittingly fallen.   Why has it taken them so long to learn that protection in the post colonial era is simply colonialism  in a new guise ?  ( Assistance between equals, of course, is another matter ).   No mistakes the Vietnamese could have made in the name of protection.
       Everybody, who thinks himself advanced and knowledgeable has one last most difficult lsson yet to learn: no matter how helpful he may think he can be, he must not step in and try to show others how to run their affairs; he too must learn superhuman patience.
        The Phong 's poems  are dramatizations of the Vietnamese consciousness from the well of such thoughts.   The poems are monologues, thoughtful efforts to discover both sense and kindness in the surrounding madness.   The result is perhaps prolix sometimes, but that is a fault of  his generosity.  His detail, through counterpointing is compaasionate to both victim and helper.   One  can be restrained simply by refusing to look.   The Phong looks fearlessly and still can be restrained.   Even in the midst of their inferno the Vietnamese can find voices  like The Phong - that is the wonder.   His fearless restraint, so much in evidence in their poems, is a most moving lesson for non-Vietnamese readers evrywhere .
   []
 LLOYD FERNANDO *
Professor of English,
Dept. of English,
University of Malaya, Malaysia.
----
* Lloyd Fernando  ( 1926-2008).
 ( from  ASIAN MORNING WESTERN MUSIC poems by THE PHONG.   Preface  by LLOYD FERNANDO.
( - First  published by Dai Nam Van Hien Books,  Saigon, South Vietnam  1971      
  This Edition : Jan. 2012 - Ho Chi Minh City )