in a War Time”
I began to know my existence when I was ten.
By ten, I began to learn the history of my country.
My teacher usually harangued: “Love the white heron and the black buffalo in the rice field.
Love your mother, father, neighbors, old people, and newly born babies in the cradles.
Our ancestors bequeathed our land to us under the full sunlight.
Now, the sun has set. But why in the East?!”
Then, I began to imagine and to feel confused
When I look at the sun rising in the east and shining on the rice field.
There, scarecrows had been dressed and posted to ward birds away from crops
for thousands of years.
There, buffaloes were still carrying plows and turning “right” and “left” on their furrows.
Poor peasants were still planting young rice plants with their hands.
There, the ground had traces of a millennium of Chinese occupation and eighty years of
French domination.
Thus, with ten years of my childhood, I was living in the shadow of an aged foreign yoke.
I recognized better my existence when I was twelve,
By twelve, I began to miss the drum sounds calling for school daily
And began to suffer agony
When my family fled to the coastal site.
I felt so sad to leave my empty house behind.
Then, people arose for the independence fight
Leaving the rice field for wild weeds to overgrow.
There, I could not hear again charming lyrics and riddles on sunny days.
The scarecrows’ rude garments were in rags and their straw bodies began to decay.
There, innocent people became scarecrows
Were disturbed at early dawn to keep watching for gunfire
And staggered at nightfall for deserted hallows or dense forests to be sheltered.
Since the colonists had come back to our ground
To kill and hound.
And the communists also made the same sounds.
Or, we were frightened by smelly corpses drifting along the waters
For hawks to lacerate and crows to peck.
Thus, since twelve years of age, I have seen my country covered
with spreading flames in the air and blood on the ground.
At fourteen, I felt so sorrowful for my existence
When history changed its course
And society changed its face.
On every path many families began to return to their homes, in rags.
We also returned to our home village.
Our house with its red tiled roof had been perceived from afar
Now, I could not see it again.
The whole area was in ruins with an eerie emptiness.
Our once lovely abode disappeared without a trace.
Only some fruit trees remained with their smoking trunks and broken branches.
The garden was covered by thorny plants
And thick weeds overran its entrance.
This fertile soil had once flourished with beautiful flowers and sweet fruits.
All existed in my life as a happy paradise.
Now, it looked smaller and withered in my eyes.
After two years of wandering around
I had seen our immense country being set on fire.
Then, my life was growing with more sufferings and knowledge.
At fourteen, I felt older than I really was.
I committed to the war when I was twenty.
The war had long hung around to kill youths of my generation.
Abandoning lamp and books
I forgot my school life to wear a uniform.
With amazed emotions and eyes widely opened
I engaged into the battle and wondered:
“Do I need to handle a gun and shoot you, or let you target your guns to shoot at me?
Oh, men of the same skin shade and same mother tongues!”
Perhaps, the war would not hear the voice of anyone’s heart.
Then, I was living a full life with my boots marching tirelessly around the country
From Thua Thien and Quang Tri
To Darlac and Kontumn,
From small cities and deserted towns
To gloomy hamlets and destitute villages.
Everywhere, there was war and sadness.
Everywhere, innocent people suffered malice
And were frightened by the gun sounds night after night.
Then came Dien Bien’s violent fights and the resolute Geneva Treaty.
It divided my country,
The Ben Hai River was cut in the middle.
A million people migrated to the South,
And twenty-five million others beheld this calamity with anguished souls.
That was my existence when I was twenty.
At twenty, my miserable country was cut in two.
At thirty-two, I began to compose poetry to recount the existence of my self
And life of others in my generation
Who endured the war and had an age-long struggle for independence and freedom
for the country.
My poems would cry for the people in the North
Who had been grasped by their souls and strangled in the red hell under the communist seizure
For a dozen years.
My poems would cry for the people in the South
Who had once touched on democracy and once made a revolution;
Still, their hearts were not content.
Opposing parties continued to march down streets with controversial demands.
My poetry, like a pitiful voice, was unheard at that age of disturbance
As it resonated from a desert at far distance.
How the Vietnamese younger generations could hear it and comprehend
The tragedy of our time.
In which, millions of people had once risen up and fallen down in order to safeguard
peace and freedom for their motherland.
A land that was suffering misfortunes with tears and blood flowing full force.
That was my existence at thirty-two years of age
Since then, I have had a real image of my life.
Van Nguyen Duong (1966)