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| MINIMAL INSPIRATION, enamels markers and ink pen on paper, N.UND copyright 2018 |
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| AO DAI LAC GIUA RUNG THU, N.UND COPYRIGHT 2016, enamels and water color on paper, with caligraphy in ink pen |
three poe`mes en prose: Three poems in prose:
CHÀO ĐÔNG SƯƠNG, VỚI MIÊN TRƯỜ̉NG BÙI GIÁNG
Saigon mưa nắng mênh mang
Muà Đông đối mặt, miên trường ẩn sau
Trắng nguyên một mái như lau
Cây xanh cũng trắng toát màu tang thương -- dnn
Trắng như tà áo Đông Sương
FROM A VIETNAMESE WOMAN: I will see you off on the road of poetry
Yes I will see you off, at the end of such road where future divides and people unite, where winter spreads before our wings and eternal sleep hides behind our back. Yes I will see you off, no regret, no hesitation, no speculation. The road ends and we happily bend. Onto eternity we cough and up the mountains of Sisyphus we laugh, 'cause love is like that cough which cannot be hidden, nec amor nec tussis celatur, and sufferings are like the roar of the Gods' recalcitrance. Hail, and End. To Emily we send our moss and to Hamlet we set him free. Yes I will see you off yet to you I hold on, with spirit so sacred, with memory as disappearance and our arms as tolerance. At the end of such road we toast to Baudelaire and upon his elbows I impress my kiss and collapse upon his hips, and I will see you off for Vietnam's Bui Giang the Guru and his kindred Nguyen Du the fated poet, their six-eight verses that become the country, three hundred years before and a thousand footsteps thereafter all rushed toward the rain of fate, so humid and damp our dreams on ground yet broken, and off we go farewell my hero until the new beginning, where we the crowd or just the two of us alone shall meet...Recommencing.
July 2020 copyrighted n.und
LOTUS AT SUNSET N.UND COPYRIGHT 2020, enamels on paper with digital infusion
FROM ANCIENT VIETNAM TO 2021'S AMERICA:
THE DYING VIETNAMESE POET AND HIS LADY OF DREAM
"Tiếc thay chút nghĩa cũ càng
Tiếc ai ngọc bể tơ chùng
Ngó sen khô gãy, lạnh lùng trăng treo
Có nàng vòì võĩ̉̃ trông theo
Xẻ đôi, thiếu phụ bên đèo vọng phu -- dnn
Vầng trăng nếu xẻ làm tư
Yes break the jade and cut the Koto strings, let the lotus roots dry out and the half-moon frozen, those symbols of an extinct East all meaningless now in this exiled fate, you and me or a hopeless unison of people abandoned and left to rot in our tomb of memory, once our destination to reach. Reaching where, or go back where, so let's burn it all, the book of rites, 'cause fear has settled in and our souls become our prison. Call out for Nguyen Du the ancient Vietnamese poet, once and for all and ask him where that beautiful lady of the harp was buried in his fossils of a world that's no more. You and me the readers of ancient rhymes that test our time, in America. You and me travellers who end nowhere yet still looking for traces of the broken jade, the harp without a tune, the wilting lotus roots that fail to connect, and the half-moon already lost in Galaxy's confusion. So what's the point then of calling out for Nguyen Du the dying poet and mourning his path of ambassadorship to China in hopes of leveling out the imbalance of power while the Statue of the Warrior’s Awaiting Wife no longer exists, the warrior will never return, and Nguyen Du will forever tear for his lady friend who is the dream, 'cause a lingering silk thread produced by one broken lotus root, flickering in Galaxy's confusion, is never enough to mend and bridge stars that shoot to die. Call me crazy, yet I hold on to that one scintilla of hope: one shooting star that never dies, in America.
July 2020 copyrighted n.und
"Chiều chiều trước bên Văn Lâu…”
Huế của hôm nào, Huế ở đâu?
Một trùng
dương cách, mẹ tôi sầu
Còn ai han
hỏi, mình răng rứa
O nớ mô rồi,
tóc kẹp sau
Huế của bao
người, lạc những đâu?
Nhắc dòng
Hương cũ, mẹ tôi sầu
Tiếng ai hò
hát trên sông vắng
Như tiếng
linh hồn ke? khóc nhau
Huế có quên
người Huế thuở xưa
Một lần ly
tán, mẹ tôi chờ
Xót xa kẻ
ngóng đầu thôn Vỹ
Có trách, xin
về khóc với thơ …
Dương Như Nguyện
copyright
1976-1995-2005
Oh sister of America who is doing
your Marilyn Monroe act in a heated swimming pool in rainy Seattle or snowy
Manhattan but who was actually born in Hue, here is what I
write on our mother and our birthplace: "What a great gift to me that my
beautiful mother is from Hue. She is the essence of our old and quiet imperial
city. Even when Hue was bombarded with gunfires and rockets, filled with
wailing sounds of survivors crying their shrieking cries for the dead, perked
up with New Year’s celebration, or faded away like funerals at the finale of
sunset, in my memory the city always remained stoicly quiet and humble, because
quietude and humility were Hue’s nature.
Like my mother’s nature. The city spoke my mother’s soft voice to me, and the
city cried its transparent tears to me like my mother cried her silenced sobs
to me. Even when Hue was full of young visitors from foreign land, the city
remained old like the toothless smile of a native matriarch who had lost trace
of her rows of descendants. My mother was like that. She could be quiet like
the smallest of sign. At times she was lost and scared and trembled like the
spirit of her old suffering Hue. When she spoke, she uttered tiny words in
between the shortness of breath. And then she could cry and lament her heart
out, like thousands of Hue citizens crying after massacres, just as I am crying
for her now. The exact same way, mother and daughter, each bearing Hue in us,
isn’t that amazing? Yet, just like stoic Hue, my mother endured. Like a
heroine, like history, like places that were thousands of years old on this
earth, my mother endured. And her dignity, just the way she sat in her
wheelchair, pensively looking at me walking around preparing her breakfast, with
her slender hands yarning together on the table where her meal was set, her
dignity surpassing all the aristocracy there was in the whole world. Let me
remind you, before her death, she could see. But she could not speak. The brain
hemorrhage had damaged her throat, her ability to swallow and speak. So she
could only speak with her eyes. The pair of eyes that holds thousands of
unspoken words. Her brain hemorrhage was like Hue’s two massacres, about a
hundred years apart, which silenced its citizens’ ability to express in words,
except those wailing cries that its citizens couldn’t help but uttering. The
cries they couldn’t forget, so the eyes of Hue shone on pages of history. All
those unspoken tales…
"Oh yes, before illness or during illness, our mother was
the essence of ancient imperial Hue from head to toe. From here to there. From
outside to inside. From close to far. From childhood to adulthood and to old
age. From life to death. Hue was in our mother,
and she became Hue. And now I inherit it all. But all I can do is tearing as I
type down here in make-believe Vietnam of humid winterless Texas. While you
swim up there in cold America’s heated urban waves."
GIÃ TỪ TÊN
TUỔI KHI CÀNH HOA CHỢT TÍM
Đã đến
lúc giã từ tên với tuổi
Đ́óng băng
luôn ng̣ọn lửa cuả Tiên Rồng
Nhìn chung
quanh rác rưởi ngập trời Đông
Lấp cưả
biển tơi bời bao cá chết
Đã đến
lúc mù loà trong mắt biếc
Vì tim
người đã cạn hết lòng nhân
Trên trời
cao…Phật Chuá cũng bâng khuâng
Đặt dấu
hỏi: biết bao giờ…giác ngộ
Ở đâu đó,
đau vùi trong gác trọ
Rổ̀i lê
chân xuống phố, gục bên bờ̉
Ngước mặt
nhìn, môi mấp máy bài thơ:
“Đêm có
nắng, và cành hoa chợt tím…”
Dương Như Nguyện copyrighted 2017
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