Mai Van Phan (Vietnam)
Biography of Mai Văn Phấn
Vietnamese poet Mai Văn Phấn was born 1955 in Ninh Bình, Red River Delta in North Vietnam. Currently, he is living and writing poems in Hải Phòng city. He has won several national literary awards of Vietnam. He has published 24 poetry books, 11 of which were several times reprinted or reprinted with adjustments in English, French, Spanish, Thai, Turkey, Albanian, Hin-ddi (India)…
- Giọt nắng (Drops of Sunlight, Hải Phòng Union of Literature and Arts Associations, 1992);
- Gọi xanh (Calling to the Blue, Publishing House of The Vietnam Writer’s Association, 1995);
- Cầu nguyện ban mai (Prayers to Dawn, Hải Phòng Publishing House, 1997);
- Nghi lễ nhận tên (Ritual of Naming, Hải Phòng Publishing House, 1999);
- Người cùng thời (People of the Era, Hải Phòng Publishing House, 1999);
- Vách nước (Water Wall, Hải Phòng Publishing House, 2003);
- Hôm sau (The Day After, Publishing House of The Vietnam Writer’s Association, 2009);
- và đột nhiên gió thổi (and Suddenly the Wind Blows, Literature Publishing House, 2009);
- Bầu trời không mái che (Vietnamese-only version of Firmament Without Roof Cover, Publishing House of The Vietnam Writer’s Association, 2010);
- Thơ tuyển Mai Văn Phấn (Mai Văn Phấn: Selected Poems – essays and the interviews, Publishing House of The Vietnam Writer’s Association, 2011);
- hoa giấu mặt (hidden-face Flower, Publishing House of The Vietnam Writer’s Association, 2012);
- Bầu trời không mái che / Firmament Without Roof Cover (bilingual 2nd edition, Publishing House of The Vietnam Writer’s Association, 2012);
- Vừa sinh ra ở đó (Just Born There, Publishing House of The Vietnam Writer’s Association, 2013);
- Những hạt giống của đêm và ngày / Seeds of Night and Day (Publishing House of The Vietnam Writer’s Association, 2013);
- A Ciel Ouvert / Firmament Without Roof Cover (Publishing House of The Vietnam Writer’s Association, 2014);
- Buông tay cho trời rạng / Out of the Dark (Publishing House of The Vietnam Writer’s Association, 2013);
- Ra vườn chùa xem cắt cỏ / Grass Cutting in a Temple Garden (Page Addie Press of the UK, 2014);
- Zanore në vesë / Vowels in The Dew (BOTIMET M&B, Albania, 2014);
- บุษบาซ่อนหน้า / hidden face flower / hoa giấu mặt (Artist’s House, Thailand, 2014);
- Yên Tử Dağının Çiçeği (The Flower of Mount Yên Tử, ŞİİRDEN YAYINCILIK, Turkey, 2015);
- “The Selected Poems of Mai Văn Phấn” (Publishing House of The Vietnam Writer’s Association, 2015);
- The Secrets of Light (Publishing House of The Vietnam Writer’s Association, 2015);
- thả (Letting Go, Publishing House of The Vietnam Writer’s Association, 2015);
- आलाप प्रतिलाप (Echo of the Aalap, Publishing House of Kritya, India, 2016)…
Simultaneously on the book distribution network of Amazon, the collections Firmament Without Roof Cover, Seeds of Night and Day, Out Of The Dark, Grass Cutting in a Temple Garden, A Ciel Ouvert was published and exclusively released in the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia and European countries by Page Addie Press of the UK.
December 2012, the English collection titled Firmament without Roof Cover became one of the 100 best-selling poetry books of Amazon.
June 2014, the three collections in Vietnamese and English titled Ra vườn chùa xem cắt cỏ (Grass Cutting in a Temple Garden) and Những hạt giống của đêm và ngày (Seeds of Nights and Day) as well as his Vietnamese-French collection titled Bầu trời không mái che (A Ciel Ouvert/ Firmament without Roof Cover) were among the top ten of the 100 best-selling poetry collections from Asia on Amazon.
Poems of Mai Văn Phấn were introduced in newspapers and magazines of Sweden, New Zealand, the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, India, Albania, Turkey, South Korea, Hongkong, Indonesia and Thailand…
Poems by Mai Van Phan (Vietnam)
Oh Buffalo Calf!
Steam early in morning garden deep into the night
Rising high to the edge of silky grass
More smooth than the layer of fuzz
Green up windy
Buffalo-calf look for his mother
Respire into clouds the sound of rice fields, tree buds
Knocking the hooves on the ground
The round ball rushing bouncing up
Mole- cricket, mantis throwing the pair of sturdily built pincer
The early sunshine illuminate on body of buffalo-calf
Spreading out the caressing eyes look
Interchange of season the vault of green leaves stretch tightly
Hiding underneath of bridge waiting for buffalo-calf
I run after my shadow to roll it back
Feet touch the grass bouncing up high.
(Trans. by Tran Nghi Hoang. Edited by Frederick Turner)
The Scent of Cốm(*)
Autumn returns in shy
Vague mist upon the green rice.
That dress, that scarf, as smooth as silk, the skin, the flesh…
The north-east wind is rising up to heaven.
Rhythm of pounding Cốm, bustling season of the sticky rice:
Baskets slowly sieving out the husk. Ruddy
Fragrant grapefruit moistens the sunny drought.
Pureness the inflorescences ohmantus fragans
Between heaven and earth the lotus tuber after rain
Tormented by a deep longing at each tightening circling roll.
The green lotus leaves are giving suck to you and me,
Over-ripening the horizon clouds of summer
To nights of making love in lamplit silence,
Persimmons drenched with the fragrance of flawless Cốm.
(Trans. by Tran Nghi Hoang. Edited by Frederick Turner)
__________
(*) Cốm: green rice flakes, green rice; grilled rice. A Vietnamese special traditional snack make from young sweet rice. Rice growing farmers are the only ones who truly understand when it is time to gather young grains to make Cốm. Then young rice grains are harvested, roasted and ground down to become Cốm. They are put into a large firing pan under small flames and stirred slowly for a specific period of time. They are then poured into a rice mortar and slightly pounded with a wooden pestle, rythmically and at quick intervals until the husk is removed. Following this, the young rice is removed from the mortar and winnowed before being poured again into the mortar and the process repeated. This is then repeated exactly seven times so that all the husk is removed from the young sticky grains. If the pounding is done irregularly and in haste, or it is not repeated for the prescribed seven times, the green colour of the grains will disappear and be replaced by an unexpected brown colour. Cốm is regarded as a purely pastoral gift. To enjoy Cốm, it is advisable to chew it slowly so that one can feel the stickiness of the young rice and at the same time enjoy its sweet, fragrant taste. Visitors to Vong village (about five km from Hanoi) during the Cốm making season will have a chance to listen to the special rythmic pounding of wooden pestles against mortars filled with young rice and see women shifting and winnowing the pounded young rice.
Wind Crest
I.
Crawling on sharp top of the rock
Body of the wind is scratches
Blood of the wind is rain
Sunshine dripping down
Mountains roll the kiss up high
Gray clouds cast into block
Mountains open wide the arms, trampling the feet into ground
Crushing up into fragments
Tear off body of the wind into pieces
The starlight falling
Morning bursting out
Up to the top of slope in a flash
Open eye looking down
The kisses heaping up higher
The frenzy wind rolls up on another crest.
II.
Finding your mouth to sowing
Wind tender clinging the limbs of land
Plunge down to the abyss
Rotten the bowels of hills and mountains
Chest of wind drifting
Playing on the ground
The shell cracked flashing
Spring overflowing the grain mouth
Waiting to sprout the cotyledons
Wind carry the ground away.
III.
Shut tight the door the more wind blew
Thing suddenly remembered also breathlessly, tightness across the chest
The eye of wind swept me into your
Rotating quickly round and round
Swiftly pass a bridge
My body was bending down by the wind
Drooping down like wet towel across the railing
Dripping down to the swift-flowing river.
Remembering the train cutting through body of the wind
Column of smoke overturned and sound of the siren disappeared in an instant
My breath is constringent through the trumpet-reed
Glared flashing the pressure of eagle spreading wide
Raising fragile dragonfly wings
Backrest cavalier on the wind crest
Outside the vault of leaves disorder
Stirred, tattered, to satisfy the frenzied excitement
The inhibition of lust.
(Trans. by Tran Nghi Hoang. Edited by Frederick Turner)
The Rock Inside Stream Bed
Be quiet for water flowing
Swift, deep, unending, icy cold over the rock.
Is there the Spring?
Festoon climbing the trail
Voice of birds resounding down gurgling
Shadows of trees tremble on the rock, shade or sun–
How can the colors of wildflowers could unscathed forever?
The stone closes its eyes in calm to let the water sweep across it.
Langurs with ashen thighs(*)
Cause the tree-shadows again to bob and rise;
Gentle drizzling rain disordered flies
Creeping into the deepest crevices.
Clouds stop where the clouds…
The fragrant odor of ripe guava creeps through the forest
A porcupine ruffles up its quills, goes still.
Above all in this moment
Let’s stay put at the spot where you are at
(Trans. by Tran Nghi Hoang. Edited by Frederick Turner)
_________
(*) A kind of gibbon (vọoc chà vá chân xám or ‘vọoc Java (?) chân
xám’) Scientific name: Pygathrix cinerea.
The Flower of Mount Yên Tử(*)
It blooms on the mountain top
Serene in strong winds
Under the clouds of change
Seven hundred years ago
The Buddha King Trần Nhân Tông
Lowered his head when passing by
You and I
Lower our heads when passing by
The children
Also lower their heads
When passing by
As we descend the mountain
We meet the pilgrims
Holding small bamboo canes
All eyes turn upward
As we amass heat to burn the flower to its roots.
(Trans. by Lê Đình Nhất-Lang. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
___________
(*) The Yên Tử mountain in Quảng Ninh province. On the top of Yên Tử has Chùa Đồng Buddhist temple founded. It is a cloud-kissing mountain with its 1,068 km hight above the sea level. It was first built during the rule of the Lê dynasty, nearly 250 years ago.
Notes Taken at the Great Wall
Clouds are stacked like heavy boulders on my shoulders
My eyes blurring in the blowing sands
which fill my lungs with every breath
Is the Great Wall still being built?
In the air the voice of a eunuch blasts out a decree
Anyone who creates poetry while carrying boulders
will be beaten until they spew out blood
End of decree!
Looking up I see a sagging face
cold hands, leaden eyes, gravel voice
The roof of a beacon tower in crimson red
bares the shape of a bloody blue dragon saber on his neck
I bend my back to cart sunlight away
I thrust my legs to cart wind away
Anything to get near that flower
waving lively in strong wind.
Your Majesty / Dear Sir / Reporting to Comrade…
This lowly officer / base citizen / humble self…
will fulfill his responsibilities
Whether this is the top of sky
or bottom of abyss
I only feel your burning whip lash on my back
On gray stone, travelers’ sweat
blooms into poppies.
(Trans. by Lê Đình Nhất-Lang. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
From Our Home
You gather things according to their seasons
a bunch of grapefruit flowers for autumn
plums for spring
We are the pulse of air, deep abyss, breasts of soil
we choose warm places to set our furniture
uncluttered places to put our tables and chairs
We drop our worries at the dinner table
with chopsticks we pick vegetables from the field afar
the fish bites on the bait inside our clay pot
We love the footprints near the rice stubble
deep wells, streams and rivers, ponds and puddles
Don’t sit in the room too long
go out into the field, out to the river bank
where leaves grow green and fish wriggle
Bite on fresh pineapple or sweet orange
and let juice drop on brown soil.
(Trans. by Lê Đình Nhất-Lang. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
Sleep-walking
(For the writer Bùi Ngọc Tấn)
You toast
With your smile that scars the stone surface
Crystal trembles in your hand
You drink up the bird calls
Dropping rotten footprints all over the cold stony veranda
Your blanket covers restless insect lives
You breathe each other
In unusual rains
A bowl deeply sunken as carved by a breast
A caged boar’s juice to spurt on a wooden pig*
You’re lucky to live through fits
As eyes of relatives amend your things
A blanket on white fields
Words make the soil pregnant
Through aberrations…
Grabbing the night wall
You have stood up who-knows-when
Someone pours into your sleepwalking steps
One more glass
One more…
(Trans. by Lê Đình Nhất-Lang. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
_________________
* In his novel, Bùi tells the story of a boar which is caged for too long. Upon release, it jumps on a wooden pig and performs copulation.
The Soul Flew Away…
…
A spider’s hammock being torn by the lifting fog
Returns freedom to the soft tongues of grass
The drifting clouds rub out
A horizon which has just buried darkness
Blood resurrected within the ground
Turns into young sap welling up at each falling leaf
While long-suffering shadows remain silent
The thrush bursts out a firework of calls
Buds are shooting up dividing walls
As arteries of streams clear and circulate
Tongues made of glass break into voices
To discuss each discolored photo
The words in a notebook having dreamed of fire
Just before they become ashes, suddenly come to
When moving out, one has tossed the incense sticks’ leftovers into the river
So one wonders why fragrant smoke still lingers…
(Trans. by Lê Đình Nhất-Lang. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
Variations on a Rainy Night
Rain comes at last
And thunder rumbles
Tender shoots strip naked in darkness
The land tries to hide its barren dryness
When roots feel their way into our chest
Together we desire
And together we recall
A leafy cone hat and raincoat or lightning across the sky
Night lies down with all the tombs
Its black shirt still hung in the trees
Together things cool down
And together things echo
The sounds get lost inside our deep sleep
Where countless upside-down dreams are shattered
In this cool, expanding, reverberating rain water.
(Trans. by Lê Đình Nhất-Lang. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
Holding You in My Mouth
I always believe you are in my mouth
Where there is no war, no plague
No poisonous arrow furtively shot
No rumours, no traps, no deception
Where you tread has no sharp thorns
And I will raise up a wall against all raging storms
You gently push your shoulders,
Your chest, your toes against my cheeks
Talkative and silently singing
You innocently let my tongue and teeth touch your body
Secure in my mouth
I am a fish overfilled with moonlight
And leaving my school I leap into the sea in movements.
(Trans. by Nguyen Tien Van. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
Hearing You on the Phone
On the phone your voice sounds clear and light
A drop of water just absorbed
A sprout just emerged
A ripe fruit just dropped down
A spring just flowing on
In the distance, at the other end of the line, there are rice-fields, villagers carrying bamboo poles and baskets. Vehicles and towers. Deep roots. Your voice does not cross over them but turns them into miniatures, and opens passage doors of communication between them. I hear you and with the help of deep roots, I can open up multiple sacred layers inside the warm earth; the river flows into the poles and baskets; the villages give birth to towers of fertility; the rice fields are green against traffic vehicles.
Please say more spontaneous nonsense to me.
In a moment when you put down the receiver, perhaps all things would dissolve away or return to the way they were
Only left with the rippling of waves far away
Only left with the chlorophyll dispersing
Only left with the fragrance of tenderness
And the rocky banks in all their trembling
(Trans. by Nguyen Tien Van. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
Carrying the Water Basin
It was raining
I carried the basin of water
From the closed and warm room
The rain was drumming on the tin roof
On each step of the staircase
My body and my breath
Were fused into the basin
Suddenly in my imagination emerged the images of:
… pursuing you in the rain…
… you are bare-headed,dripping and soaked…
… I wear warm clothes, holding an umbrella…
… I am at leisure… you are at ease…
… you whizz past… I run out of breath…
… I keep my promise… never let you be wet…
But it’s so strange
When the water basin is held high
And your images appear in fragments
Their montage shows nothing of empathy.
(Trans. by Nguyen Tien Van. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
Waking Up in the Rain
1.
I open the door on a dark day
The mist rushes in with its moisture
I stir up the furnace
To dry my coat and scarf
Of regrets
Still swallowing your kiss
I turn my head to look through the window
A pigeon lands on the porch roof
Rain attaching to purple wings
Spring wind is everywhere
A cobweb of veins rushes across the lime wall
No need to flap wings
No need to fly away
The pigeon and I
Sprout into green buds.
2.
The blanket so warm I cannot sleep
I imagine you come over and open up my ceiling
You untie your curls of hair and wrap me tight
You pull me up and keep me hovering in the night
You turn with the winds
Sometimes you let me touch
The lake’s icy surface
The exhausted soil
The dew soaked grass
Drop me down!
You drop me down!
At that moment I become a seed
Shooting out my roots and seed-leaves
For fruit to ripen, for good wine to be brewed
And for birds’ eggs to be kept warm through the night
I hold on to these images until morning.
3.
You drop me down like sowing seeds
I am awake when the wet greenery lights up the sky
Rain drops come together to play drums on the roof
The earth softens until our breathing spreads out fast
You draw up the blanket in shyness to cover your breasts
Just in case someone drops by to tidy up the room
In that unfinished dream
Suddenly new leaves sprout up in droves
Inside each other we bury small seeds
They are dropped in with early morning kisses.
4.
The earth begins a new revolution
A faster one
The sun has gone home with darkness
The flora, footprints
And houses with doors shut tight
Worker bees fly back
When the hive and the queen bee are no more
The scent of earth finds the rain drops strange
The sky horse is delirious with speed
It staggers while tightly grasping tree branches
The eagle spreads its wings on the mountain top
The sea suffocates a river’s mouth
I kiss you for a long time to mark
This place. This hour
When clouds descend
The earth returns to the original day.
5.
A bird nest bloody with dirt
Coils from forest trees
A running stream
Woven by a vision
From you I am born into one, two, three…
Multiplying into thousands
This me
And this me too
One, two, three… I kiss you
The bird’s nest full of sunlight
Reeks of forest bulbs
And is filled with the scent of forest flowers
No matter where we are
We weave into each other to make another nest.
6.
We are together more
Before a transparent dawn rises up
Flowers suddenly wake unfolding under shades of trees
A water spider dwells in decaying straws
Vetiver roots
Are twisting deep underground
The flowing current
Keeps flowing
Holding the two of us back
Each kiss opens one more door
We hold each other’s hand tightly
Clutch each other’s arm tightly
For fear of finding loss
Bewildered as a heavy rain comes
We recognize our childish hands
Our tottering feet
Walking on earth
Perhaps the day is late
Yet we are still in each other’s arms waiting to see dawn.
7.
The photo shows you walking on a stony seashore
Incidentally I take it as another picture
Seeing you as a small dot in a field
Very lightly drawn with just a drop of color
A slope of smooth sand
The path to shore being the field
Your hair wrapped by wind around a silent branch
I wish that a fearless flock of birds could fly into this moment.
And swoops down to collect grains of paddy rice
I will forgive the hungry meadow mice emerging from their earthly dwellings
Forgive the rainstorm making heads of rice drop
Forgive the scalding sunlight
For all the sun can give
Rosy sunlight, late afternoon sunlight
Which make each blossoming rice field glow at once.
Waves on the Bạch Ðằng river run over
The deposits on my shoulder
I drive a pile deeply in to anchor a kite
While thanking my father and mother
Roots of mangrove and cork tree silently twine together
Reeds at water edges stir under the sun
Brooding in the grass
Burying itself in your tiny hand
A big fish is thrown on the ground.
I bend down to pick up any object – a pebble, a blade of dried straw, somebody’s thread of hair… My memories remind me of the clothes you wear, peeled off shoes, areas of flesh.
My touch lets me know the pebble is very soft, the blade of dried straw bends under its weight, the thread of hair breathes lightly.
I hold them for a very long time.
Toss them to the ground. Fling them up to the sky and catch a rain drop
I stretch out my arms and breathe
My wide-spanning body
Opens up to water
My body
A tiny door
I bend my body in the coolness
And relax
I rearrange my bones
The current washes away every dead cell
I lie down in the grass and breathe in deeply
Compressing the sky
A bird call blows up a high wind
To be a seed, the hand that sows
To be fishing bait, a fish trap, seaweed…
Waves come relentlessly
Pouring onto an imaginary ship’s deck.
My tongue’s tip touches the cream
Shaped as a flower
A horizon drawn by somebody
I bite hastily
And eat hesitantly
Wanting you to know I am here
This half-finished cake
A flock of ducks paddling by
Nectar season for bees
A cake which has been in the oven becomes soft and fine
Place a slice next to a fragrant cup of tea and a sharp knife.
12.
I miss you as I read a book. A scene envisioned from these pages is animated in a powdery silver light. A character from the story has just washed his hands with gleaming moonlight. The flesh imbued scent of moon flows down a deep groove in the ground, from where, now and again, a reed stalk rises up and wavers. The text continues with the scene of fog descending on a small village. A young barefooted woman carries rice into the forest. A skirt of forest full of moonlight. A man lies asleep, dreaming of wild mangosteens arranged into a throne, awaiting his awakening… Light isn’t mentioned in the text. I imagine images under the moonlight. Those stories full of moonlight.
13.
From black cavities holding inserted seeds
Young shoots rise up
Birds fly
The tender roots know
That earth has embraced sky for a long time
As soon as seed coats are dropped
They release greenness to the vast fields
Brimming with sweet sap
As days grow deeper
Young shoots covering the soil turn luxuriant.
The fresh rose stigmas
And the pure white petals
Open a sky of breath
I breathe green grass
Rugged rocks, an edge of abyss
The breath’s of gibbons, wild as their flesh
The flowers’ delirious scents and colors
Touch me and fade away
They fade away
My lips turn into the bill of a hummingbird
Whose wings beat constantly to stay in the same place.
15.
Bones of winter
Flesh of spring
Lilies open their immaculate, white petals
A vague fragrance
Fills up the room
I reach for the flower vase
And turn all the sepals in another direction
Bright green flower stalks lean on me
Waiting for each drop of pristine
White grounds to be blown on top like a storm.
16.
It’s fruit-bearing season for the trees
They hold the wind inside and become heavy
I am the nutrients
To relieve all trees from fatigue
I lean against a tree trunk
Listening to bird songs
My blood flows along the trees’ bones
As I pollinate the stamens
While young fruit buds
My saliva is acrid when swallowed
The wind wraps me on a tree
For its fruit to ripen.
17.
A giant flower
Hugs me in my sleep
Its stalk reaches through the sky
And I can’t see its root
Throughout my dream the flower hardly withers
As morning comes each petal shrinks
Into a bud
I have been through a lifetime of dreaming
To wake up into a lifetime of loving
As I run towards where the current of scents ends
I see a pathway
When I touch a tiny flower
All flower stems on this earth tremble.
Rain drops touch my face and lightly stir.
In the sound of rain, aquatic beasts rise, their fish-like fins gliding back and forth. A shrimp bends and springs in my wave-choked body.
Let water not drizzle or drip. Let it drain into lakes and streams making rocks soften and expand.
My bare arms prop up a tree trunk. Buds are wet.
Some rain drops touch my skin and my tongue, suggesting curves and a waist of rain.
Thunder rolls at the very moment I imagine a big fish splashes its way out of my body. It emerges, then swims away calmly in the rain.
19.
I look at a flamboyant canopy and see fluffy strands of early fog move over the lake
A smile like agitated waves
You often forget this lake by your side
Its mist rises as you talk, smile and make up
On your way you feel suddenly cool
Everywhere you go the lake follows
Someone splashes water on each organ
Waves draw you away, then submerge you to their deep bottom
You open the door and look into a crowded street
An electric wire from your neighbor’s has dropped down across an artemisia pot
Nearby the lake spreads out
Turns into your eyes looking at me.
- 20.
Not knowing how many flowers there are in the vase
I bow down to a lotus pedestal
I remember having sat on a chair
Holding a glass of water
Leaning on the table
The lotus scent carries me to a mountain top
On its peak, clouds fly past
There is no footstep or sound from any forest animal
I remember being a bullet, a thorn
A sharp and pointed arrow soaked with lotus blood on rocks
Now why do I still think of a piercing arrow, a bullet and a thorn?
The pure scent of flowers covers the mountain rocks
It covers the bare vegetation where soil is void
A lizard grows bold
In a space vacant of human beings
I raise my head so the lotus scent no longer carries me away
Look here, one… two… petals have fallen
Touching the ground with a sound.
- 21.
A photo is smooth and aromatic
From morning sunlight
And a lotus flower next to it.
All those pure white petals
Spread out to cover the whole space
Following the scent
I slip inside your eyes
Your jewels, clothes and scarves
I open a drawer to find a notebook
Choose the colors for my paper and ink
Let my tea draw
Leaf to boiling water
As I set myself tasks
Some new flowers have bloomed
Next to the picture frame without a door.
- 22.
Pour water down
It permeates
In the dry ground, the sound of roots dying
Roots, bristling and bloodless, are floundering
Where are you that swing and sway, where is all that is verdant?
Where is this photosynthesis?
Once touched by water
Roots take flight
Bodies swell with sap flowing to the tree top
Cracks open the bark
The soil and space
Where is the wind?
Where are the birds?
Someone shakes the tree trunk for one moment
Just as I think it over,
Cool water spreads all over my body.
- 23.
Hiding inside me
You hear me being silent, talking or laughing
Our feet are within each other’s
Your hands are for me to use
Midsummer
Sunlight from relentless waves
Shimmers and sparkles
You raise my hand to cover your face
Schools of fish show their silvery scales
They cut straight lines on water
Dividing the sea surface into many parts
My heart is infused by this beautiful scenery
Which dissolves
In the blue waves as I look upon you
You lying in my heart
Why don’t you whisper something to me.
- 24.
Biting on an apple, you say
That inside there is a sea
A sweet and fragrant sea current
The sea ripens on a tree
The sea bed
Deep earth with tree roots
An estuary encases our lips
Nibbling at the shore
It stops where we are standing
Where people are making love
Far out in the sea the water is sweet
At the spring
The rainwater is still sweet
You say although it is as small as an apple
If I lie the sea will submerge me to death.
- 25.
A tree trunk stands
Holding up a sky of ripened fruit.
- 26.
… the rain penetrates …
Waves are mute
Mountains are unmoved
Stiff roots criss cross
Bird eggs lie under mother bird’s belly
A lizard stays immobilized
Bells stop ringing
Clouds swirl around a tower top
The pavement stands momentarily still
… the rain penetrates …
Waves hurl themselves down a gorge
Bells ring endlessly
Birds flap their wings
The lizard leaves on a journey
With the pavement, the clouds, the trees…
We pull up the ground
to discover many grounds that we haven’t visited
Together we look at thousands of hidden cross sections
To realize we have changed yet remain naive forever
Tomorrow still in love
Our hearts beating wild like the first time
In my heavy breathing I know
Our hands hold seeds
Sow… Sow…
We sow…
Seeds unintentionally dropped on our way
Rise up as immense greenery
We pull up the ground so that cool air and bird calls
Are folded into deserted places
So that daylight resounds in deep earth
I am opening a myriad of doors into every object
Into other spaces. Other worlds.
(Trans. by Nhat-Lang Le. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
(amazon.com/author/maivanphan)
Poems and Bio of MVP to Tatjana Debeljacki
ATUNIS GALAXY POETRY 