poetry by DNN

 A Peach Blossom Branch[1] for The Awaiting Vietnamese Wife

NOTE: Vietnam’s Statue of the Awaiting Wife becomes the literary and musical motif for Vietnamese women during wartime. Eighteenth-Century poetess Đoàn Thị Điểm (1705-1748) translated Chinh Phu Ngâm (“Lament of the Warrior’s Wife”), a long, epic poem written originally in Chinese by Scholar Đặng Trần Côn (1705-1745), about ancient Vietnam’s Awaiting Wife of wartime. This epic poem has become the centerfold of Vietnamese ancient literature, together with “The Tale of Lady Kieu” by Nguyen Du and “Lament of the Royal Concubine” by Nguyen Gia Thieu. See previous footnotes, infra, regarding these pieces of Vietnamese literary classique’s.

~~~

“Culture is what’s left after what has been lost” ©nnd 1988


…Am I truly waiting

to do my part,

and what part is that

in the crossing of cultures?


I, the modern woman from an ancient place
stand between walls of confusing space,
at the crossroad of a way downward,
yet not really looking for a way homeward

I no longer wait for my husband on top of a lonely mountain,
no longer cradle my child
It is now that I must accept my inheritance
of the warrior’s sword

But, is the sword what I need now
when there’s no longer a fight of force
and what to fight for
is what’s left unseen!!!????

© nnd 1988, 2013

Vietnamese text

Cành Đào Cuà Nàng Tô Thị

Tôi, người đàn bà của thế giới bây giờ,
đến từ nơi chốn vô cùng xưa cũ,
đư'ng bên những bức tường loang lổ của sự hỗn loạn,
giữa ngã ba của cái gọi là đường về quê hương
nhưng tôi nào có đi kiếm con đường về ấy?

Tôi không còn đứng đợi chồng trên đỉnh núi cô đơn
Cũng không còn đứng ru đứa con bất hạnh của mình
Bây giờ, tôi phải chấp nhận món quà của mẹ cha để lại,
cái gọi là thừa kế
Món quà ấy,
bây giờ, là thanh bảo kiếm của người chiến sĩ

Nhưng thanh kiếm có phải chăng là cái tôi cần?
Khi chiến trường không còn nữa
Cái mà tôi phải chiến đấu bây giờ
Là việc gìn giữ "những gì còn lại của cái gì đã mất"*
Cái vô hình, cái mông lung
tôi không còn thấy được...

©nnd 2013



“Peach Blossom Branch For The Statue of The Awaiting Wife,”
pastal chalks markers enamels ©nnd 2010

[1] A peach blossom branch or a miniature peach tree is what Vietnamese traditionally give to each other as a Lunar New Year gift. Many Vietnamese believe that in the 1960s, Ho Chi Minh (President of the North) secretly tried to send Ngo Dinh Diem (president of the South) a peach blossom branch, in hopes of initiating peace talk. According to this undocumented belief, America policymakers wanted to send U.S. troops to Vietnam, over the objection of Ngo Dinh Diem, who wanted the war against Communism to be a Vietnamese product without U.S. direct participation in combat, or American influence over South Vietnamese self-governance. Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated, and President Johnson escalated the war, leading to U.S. bombing of Hanoi. The story of the undelivered “Peach Blossom branch” between North and South in the early 1960s remained a rumor, perhaps sygnifying the collective longing for peace by Vietnamese from both sides of the war.