Poems Of Mai Van Phan (Vietnam)
Intro :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 published 19 books in Vietnam and 34 books abroad, including poetry collections, books of criticism and essays, and translated books. Poems of Mai Văn Phấn are translated into more than 40 languages.
Vietnamese and International Literary Awards: The Vietnam Writers’ Association Award in 2010; The Cikada Literary Prize of Sweden in 2017; The Frederick Turner prize of Mundus Artium Press (USA) for Poetry in 2023; Five-time times winner of the Golden Pen Literature Award of Russian Federation in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, etc.
Editor’s Remark : Mr. Mai is well-known poet & sensitive human. He believes in humanity, eternity, authenticity of life. He worships the truth. He expresses his emotions in such a way that the reader get amzed & impressed. His metaphors, images , symbols should be studied deeply. He creates a new surprising universe in his poetry which is really a remarkable thing. We are so happy to publish his poems in our blog. I hope every reader get the same magical experience. Thanks.
— Dr. Sanjay Borude
(For Ngọc Trâm)
As fever is burning you on its pyre
I become ash too
The bitter potion cannot wait any more
Holding your hand
I pour
My grief into the empty bowl…
O’ daughter! As the mist falls
My hardship arches across the cold night
For frail flowers
To give off scent needs bitter roots.
Sweat becomes callused hands
Spring pours into the medicine bowl
My old age weeps with mute tears
While truth bursts out for no reason.
I wonder what you eat in your dreams
I put the bowl on the window
When you grow up to my age now
At the bottom of the bowl
There may still be a storm.
***
2. 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.
One’s memory stirs
Where shades have deeply buried shades
Rottenness thirsts for the calamity of fire
Stars sleepwalk
Falling into thin dew
Bitter leaves crawl over scalding coals
In their breath pine leaves shroud pine cones
Someone is putting away his traveling case
Shadows that hide in antique objects
Still tremble in fear when their names are called
Tears blur the epochs
In an irrational movement
The ground lies on its belly to support the levee
A stream of white smoke rises up
A fall pours down from layers of dying leaves
Deep tombs open in one’s chest
Revealing the arterial paths
Corrupted by many inverted rooftops
With stains on the lime-washed web-ridden walls
Inside which the dull tapping sounds
Urge a run towards the door.
(Trans. by Nhat-Lang Le. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
4.Where the Sky Is Spacious
You blow in the warmly ardent season
Trees wither for lack of water not far from the river swollen in splendor
The fish grinds up the hook and upsets the order of time
I shrink up to fly into infinity
The tower raises multi-directional sensory organ
Your braided hair is glorious like a beaded open-air crown
and your skin resplendent as the back of the moon
sweet fruit and golden paddy resplendent as the back of the moon
the timely seeds stand up proudly
the thunder, lightning and tornado are self-confident,
but when my grandparents’ silhouettes are seen
through the perfumed vapour of cooked rice, I burst into tears
Overwhelming absorption and sudden revelation
are woven into horizon of clouds in every circular breath of hope
to trigger the drops of drizzle in the chest
and the leftover food preserved in memory
Truth makes the letters jump out and they cannot be withdrawn
we are all more self-confident when we wake up and see the symbol engulfed in the mouth of fire.
(Translated by Nguyễn Tiến Văn. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
***
5.Accompanying the Guest Out of the Alley
After brewing tea
When I returned
The guest was gone
Speaking on the phone
His family said he had been dead seven years
A misunderstanding
At home
All in turmoil
No memory of when the portrait was taken down
Where was the winding clock?
To whom was the fake ancient teapot given?
Dropping in on the neighbour
To check several food items
Some with higher prices
Some remained unchanged
In the house
The tea still hot
Pushing a cup towards the guest’s vacant place
A deadly vapour six meters high suddenly rose up
Bowing down in front once in a while.
(Translated by Nguyễn Tiến Văn. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
***
6.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.
(Translated by Nhat-Lang Le. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
***
7.The Song of Harvest
Spreading quickly, overwhelming reclaimed virgin land
You drop one burst of wild flower after another
to whirl me up from the house with its small garden
The birds cut up immense space and leave lines of endless flight
My roots reach up to your verdant eyes
Every sprout sprays warmth to wet the bosom of earth
from the breathing that transforms the sky
from the empty sky that builds clouds up
The thatch eyes burn up the old crop
To change our vision and the vacant horizon
The earth accepts all burning cinders
The new season comes with self-confidence, grinding and wiping out all
The kiss is silent, radiating heat and boring into entrails of earth
touching underground veins swollen with old mysteries
The fertile earth fused with dawn offers up a face
with exuberant plants and trees in profusion
The seasons of resurrection are pregnant with ripe ears of paddy
The thunder bursts out in the palm seeds
The cycle of fresh alluvium embraces fibres of earth
You bow down and all of a sudden, the river rushes in.
(Translated by Nhat-Lang Le. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
***
8. The Voice
When waking up
I believe I hear a voice
I don’t yet know from where it comes
Or goes
Perhaps the stream outside is about to flow in torrents
Flower stamens can now bind the bee’s feet
Lips desire to be legs to run over skin
A covetous tongue of fire lunges for the hay
Is this all it takes
To give birth to a voice
To contradict topics and definitions
I have heard or understood?
When I wander and get lost in an old place
The land there still eats silence with every meal
The silence that is torn by my teeth startles me
When I turn and run
There is no sound made by my feet.
***
I
Mother nature caressing child as the moonlight
Sound passing from bough to bough, the howling
Skin and flesh of the woman I loved,
Our love child spreading deep into the dark
Entering into the dark night,
Skin and flesh erect lift the layered clouds for us
To make a watershed of rain over the sources of rivers
A bough quivers on the water’s surface
Where a bird suddenly perches
Only I can see that small bird so far away from the road
Far away from the garden, from the other flocks of birds
I quietly pass through the corona at the bottom of the water
And look up at the sky with open wings
Rising to the top of the tree where the bird’s beak
Bends down to feed into the mouths of its fledglings
Each sip of wind
Sound of chipped grain in the chest
The bare ground and green fruit
The dense-leaved canopy of the forest
Newborn child on the ground
Swim across the river the tadpole’s tail severing
Learning to flaps its wings, fanning the wind into the nest’s warm bowel
Sprouts the cotyledon leaves, flies away freely
Steam rises by the river-wharf
Space condenses the confusion of time
Smoke steams up high
I realize I am swimming in a sea mist
Not mist but rain
The tall tower glittering
Breathing, muscles firm, the leaf singing…
The dead return, suddenly, in the blossoming flower
I shudder at a shoreline
The water surface choking where there are no breaking waves
A sip of cool water drifting slowly…
Suddenly remembers the high tide season submerging the cricket’s cave
Burble sound of bubbles gushing up by stages
So that I realize where the cave mouth is…
II
Place child on the ground
The riverbed has enough pain to tear off the body of night
Nature glossy wet
The trunk of trees disintegration turns into splinters
Water swift flowing
Flowing faster
I burst into tears to sweep away the spider web
Sound of the heron’s hoarseness
The ashes flashing up
Moon trembling
Pick up a pebble to draw on the ground
A field
The young calf bewildered
A clear outline as the calf bent down to graze
Another direction draws an extra eye
The eye of wild animals or eye of human
Write the words on the remaining empty boxes.
III
The voice very close
Under the light of dawn you must transform yourself!
Fruits
Firelights
Yin Yang bowl of water
While crawling over bowl of twilight
Pull the body gradually out of the shell
I sip the dewdrops
The ghastly shell heaped up high
Was out of reach
Groups of people helping each other towards incapacity
End of dawn.
IV
The shade of trees bursting out underfoot
Images on the map are torn off?
Or the half-bat half-mouse corpse?
I was so frightened, weaving the grating
Set booby-traps around myself
Sharpening the knife
Preparing a matchbox
As close to the horizon
The drifting darkness was terrible
Faster than emotion
I keep accumulating anxiety, the resentment
Until the blackness of night was completely
Erased off.
V
I chased small prey
Threw myself upon the wave’s crest, then lost direction
The low tide
In the dream near morning
My bones painful
The tail and dorsal fin frostbitten
There is a hand threading the strings
Dragging me slowly on the ground
They stopped to shelter from the rain
Suddenly release me
Near the foot of waves
I was grateful the rain
The loud thunder and cool wind.
VI
Father recently tried to get up after being bedridden, staggering out the door, he fell into a square block of light
He tried to point his finger, then said: “That green beetle on a leaf canopy, father sees it for the first time”.
I tell these unintentional stories about the time father was in a coma. A story of the large cloud that flew slowly through our home. The deep wells rising steam up to the window. One story about the song of the crypsirina temia bird, makes everyone look at the bowl of drugs.
The body of father is like shallow rivers, dry wood, and the empty paddy grain
The raceme of weighty fruits, swaying in the strong wind
Father suddenly whispering: Please help father go to rest
Sound of dried leaves sliding off the roof makes father and I shed tears together.
VII
The universe lays the black coat over me
Only eyes open to pray
Mumbling I still thought
… white hand black blood white tongue black tears white back black helix curl of white hair black sweat
The black spilt on everything will end us
Let’s pray to save the people of this world
Lighthouse…
Kitchen bright…
Look in any direction
Like learning to focus on the blackboard
Learning to separate the colors
To spell the letters
This crossroad of white
The earth’s surface, the seas surface white
Great old man, a chair, the woman in white
The inspector, the farmer in white…
The mouth reads aloud, the mind still holds sundry thoughts
…white tongue black tears white back black helix curl of white hair…
VIII
Curled up I sleep in cold wind
Dream to be a fetus
The navel-string connects to the solar
Fly above canopy of the trees
The eyes with a look, make the sound of sobbing… blue
Every tiny bud of limbs
Springing lightly in the body of Him
I wake up
That place starts on the road
The colt unsteady standing up
The flock of insects crawling out of the trunk
The tiny shrimp blasting off the throat of water.
IX
Drum gong and eight ornaments
Opens the festival of imperial court
Sing and dance to heaven
The great merit of four palaces
Opens the mind of a disciple
Tolerant eyes look
The quiet weather
The special envoy giving out grace
Sincerity respectfully kowtow
Four gods flanking the lady god
Garb and turban of sorceress are brocade and flower embroidery.
Come and go refreshed
Moving between heaven and earth
Powdery cheeks and ruby lips
Rhythm of bamboo beating and rhythm of castanets
String of coins
Sacred dragon hovering
Five great mandarins’
The hand swaying
High talent deep virtue
The flame glittering
Fondle protecting
Loving mason bee
Silkworm spits out the silk cord
Garb and scarf flapping
Alluvial cuddling
Wind coming back to the riverbed
Casaba melon pyriform melon
Fragrance of lotus and areca pervading
Boys and girls entering the region
prepare the sedge mat, prepare the blanket
As flower, as butterfly
Faces glowing with pleasure
As the ground is to the sky
Grass and trees in good verdant
Raining fast and violently
…
Translated from Vietnamese by Trần Nghi Hoàng
Edited by Frederick Turner
(*) Mothergate – Mother in this poem does not mean “mother” as normal. It carries the meaning of “the Way”, the “philosophy of belief.” As: “The Way that can be told of is not an unvarying way; The names that can be named are not unvarying names. It was from the Nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang; The named is but the mother that rears the ten thousand creatures, each after its kind” (Lao-tzu)
The smell of death draws the wick to the zenith
The crow shines brightly.
*
Birth
After the crow’s croaking
Irresistible departure
The pouch has been opened
Unconcealed deterioration
The herb doctor burned his books at the end of the garden
New medicines in stock had expired
The witches suffered punishment
Their mouths closed by iron hooks
Birth
When the bell suddenly dropped
Covering the old temple warden’s head
The fish committed suicide by jumping into a cloud
Ten thousand fishing hooks, hanging in the sky
Birth
Ink was splattered under feet and blood
Congealed in throat and lung arteries
With a stroke on the first page
Thousands of pages were permeated.
*
Fallen from the summit
With two sharp wings
Centering on the corpse
Slashing the atmosphere
Hurried winds had no time for bandages.
*
Clawing from the eye sockets
The viewpoints
With posthumous pictures as evidence
Cut out the tongue
Stretch to dry off in the sun
the slogan’s lesson
Slice off flesh piece by piece
Dismember limbs
Show the innards
The skull all set up
Was completely covered with mold
This epitaph could not be written.
*
The crow dreamed
All deaths were arranged
After the crow’s croaking
Who volunteers to lie down.
*
The crow flew into the room
A finger raised slightly
Implying:
This is the gun muzzle
The scythe
Even the spade
Even the very hard finger
Rather it was frozen
Then defrosted
Then melted down.
*
Do not approach the shade
It was the crow
Spreading its wings at sunset, sunrise
With its claws clinging to the winds
To grind dry leaves
To prune outreaching branches
The poet took refuge in the shade
Each letter hollowed out of an eye.
*
To look at
Things
Glaringly
Because in the wink of the eye
The shadow of the crow
Stormed in.
One’s own shadow
Did not raise its voice
For fear of turning into a chick.
*
A number of people emerged from the crowd, clad in black, wearing black masks. While running, they slapped their arms on their flanks. They tried to raise their heads by stretching their necks. The black shadow hovered close to the ground.
*
Perched on a tree fork after overeating and napping, the crow dreamed that every mouthful of food squeezed into its stomach would turn into an egg. The crow chicks crept in groups from the five organs and immediately lowered themselves to hunt with the instinct of a bird of prey.
*
The utmost sufferings looked back on a life almost dead. The cloak gave a muffled shout when passing desk and drawers. The telephone slept silently. The staple opened its mouth to hide its claws. The broomstick gripped the laborer’s arm, and pulled her to the garbage dump. The hat brim on the head cried out in panic, then bent down to devour the entire face of the guard. Nobody opened the gate. Yet many people managed to find an entrance.
*
The disembodied souls looked for a way back to fight the evil crows. After the volley of non-lethal bullets, smoke from incense joss-sticks spread onto a board, with the first word written for the new lesson.
*
This is the last line in a testament:
“Start the celestial burial at the appearance of the crow’s shadow”.
*
The night shadow crept into the crow’s belly.
And ours too. With gnawing pain together on the hungry river. The drops of troubled water found a way to pass through cotton fibres. The huge surface of water, its vibrations, wishing to keep hold of human shadows. Strike a match and remember that the wick is very distant. Throw up both arms, raise your voice alone in the darkness.
The crow out of sorts through the might
Craws in fright
For the first time the sound goes out without an echo.
(Translated by Nguyễn Tiến Văn. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
*****************
Phani Mahanti / Orissa
। like it, Sanjay. Mr Phan is a deeply rooted poet into the soil. Classical poems are they.
Phani Mahanti
Sanjay I ike it. Mr.Phan is deeply rooted in to the soil.