We promise one another /
poems from an Asian war .
T w o W o r l d s o f L ư u T r ọ n g L ư
poems by Lưu Trọng Lư
DON LUCE translated , introduced .
It is hard to imagine Vietnam at peace . Before the war ! Which war ? There have been so many , " I was born in war ; my father was killed by the war , and I shall probably die a violent death because of the war , " a twenty-six year old student states matter- of- factly . The modern song - writer , Trịnh Công Sơn , tells the history of imperalism against Vietnam in the melancholy of " The heritage of Our Mother Land " :
A thousand years slaves of the Chinese ,
A hundred years dominated by the French ,
Twenty years of civil war ,
The heritage of your Mother Land ,
To leave for her children ,
The heritage of your Mother Land ,
The sad country of Vietnam
But there were interludes of peace -- short , quiet seasons when laughter reigned over the land .
The cycle of life was determined by the rice crop - - and planting time and harvest were days of celebration and song . Such an era is now recalled only by the village elders who reminisce about a time when the seasons came and went quietly , punctuated by marriages and unhappy love affairs rather than by spring and winter offensives ; a time when it was quiet enough , if one listened , to hear the rustle of the leaves and a flute sounding softly in the distance - - a very different world indeed from that of modern Vietnam , the South at least , with its " sunset trips " bars that crowd around,, the American installations , blaring out of rock- and - roll songs , and with helicopters droning and jets roaring in the sky above .
One such time is called Tiền chiến period , the period before the French Indochina War when Vietnamese lived under the French but knew a kind of peace . The first three of the following poems by Lưu Trọng Lư bring back some of the beauty and peace of those days . His pre- war poems , particularly " The Sound of Autumn " , are still very popular . They spaek not of war , but of the age - old struggles - - with the seasons , with love , with autumn sadness . They are proof that the Vietnamese know in peace too there is heartache . It is just that for Vietnamese the heartache of peaceful life have assumed an aura of luxury as sweet as its joys , for the larger tragedy of the war ahd deprived them of both for so long .
Some of Lưu Trọng Lư' s recent poems also give expression to the timeless spects of the Vietnamese experience . In the following stanza from a poem written in 1965 , an old man continues to plow his land in th midst of destruction :
Beside the bomb carter , still smoking ,
And old uncle already eighty
Plow agile as a youth .
The aged back presses deep to the heart of the earth ,
Sliver hair like Diên Hồng flies before the wind !
Lưu Trọng Lư was born in 1912 * and went to school in Huế , in what is now South Vietnam , but he along with many other famous poets of the pre-war period now lives in the North .
He writes of different kinds of struggles now and manyu of his recent poems like
" Women of the South " , the fourth poems of this section , describe the courage of fighters who have dared to challenge the military might of the U. S. and have succeeded in shaking " the brass ans steel of the White House " .
( DON LUCE note 's )
THE SOUND OF THE AUTUMN
You don't listen to atumn
Under the dim and restless moon .
You aren't concerned with
Images of absent warriors
In the heart of lonely women .
You don't listen to the autumn forest ,
The quiest rustle of the leaves ,
Where a bewildered golden deer
Steps on golden leaves .
- - 1939
WHITE CLOUDS
The wild clouds fly over
An opening in the bamboo
And the atumn wind comes ,
And the old sadness , too .
And there are a few young
Who know sadness deep and blue
But in whose harts bloom still
Dreams red or the brightest hue
.
- - 1939
WHEN AUTUMN ENDS
Do you ever . speak to me
Words full of the love
We knew when we were young ?
Do you ever speak to me
When autumn leaves fall
And lie in the empty yard ;
And the song of the flute ,
From behind some distant curtain ,
Softly sounds in the still air ?
Do you ever think of me
When your hand reaches out
And pulls a drooping leaf
Down from its branch ?
Do you ever think of me
As the birds laugh and the wind jokes
And no one knows the love
I hold for you in my heart .
In a heart which is cold
Like the water of an autumn lake ,
As the twilight falls
On a desolate night .
I, I hope the days and months
Will not pass too quiclky ;
But you , you don't care at all
How the present time passes .
And soon winter comes
To the cold river bank ,
And hurriedly you marry ;
But, tell me , sometimes do you
Still remember the vivid summer ,
And my love lingering
In a corner of my heart ?
- -1939
-------
* Lưu Trọng Lư ( b. 1912 - d. 1991 )
WOMEN IN THE SOUTH
Trần thị Lý *
Long hair , hair of a young mother
Washed in the water of Thu Bồn ,
Adoring your body , wounded in a hundred placs ,
In life and death , always loyal .
Mười Đồng Tháp
Just turned twenty ,
Leader of three hundred struggles ,
One leg left , you stand erect
A beautiful flag wrapped your body !
Nguyễn Thị Út
A guerrilla of the Delta
Carrying your only child on your hip ,
Combing the river bank ,
Striking the enemy as naturally as you go to market !
Tạ Thị Kiều
With a beautiful name from ancient times ,
You' re a faithful niece of Uncle Hồ ,
Striking the enemy , you 're as a tiger ,
Speaking of it , you smile like a flower .
Nguyễn Thị Định
In the assault you command a hundred squads ,
Night returns , you sit mending fighters 's clothes ,
Woman general of the South , descended from Trắc and Nhị **
You' ve shaken the brass and steel of the White House .
- - 1966
poems by LƯU TRỌNG LƯ
-----
* Trần Thị Lý is a woman's as are the other headings of this poem .
** Trưng Trắc & Trưng Nhị , the famous TRƯNG sisters who led
Vietnamese against the Chinese about 40 B.
( DON LUCE 's notes )
( from WE PROMISE ONE ANOTHER - POEMS FROM AN ASIAN WAR
Don Luce, John C. Schafer & Jacquelyn Chagnon selected, translated and introduced .
Published by The Indochina Mobile Education Project , Washington , D.C. 1971 - p. 15 - 19 )
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