Nguyen Binh Phuong
Nguyen Binh Phuong’s: real name is Nguyen Van Binh. He was born in 1965 in Thai Nguyen, eighty kilometers north of Ha Noi. He has written both poetry and prose since the 1990s. He is the editor-in-chief of the Van Nghe Quan Doi, a magazine specializing in literature. He has published six novels including The Young Die Old and I and They, and five collections of poetry including Nonchalant Fishing. He won the Hanoi Writers Association Prize twice, first for Nonchalant Fishing, and second for I and They. His works have been translated into English and French.
Tran Nhuan Minh
Tran Nhuan Minh: born August 20, 1944 in Hai Duong province. He as published 63 books in Vietnam and abroad, including 36 volumes of poems.His prose works have been translated into 7 languages, published and released in 7 countries, his poetry has been translated into 16 languages, published and released in 19 countries around the world. He received the State Award for Literature and Arts from the President, in 2007.
KHAU VAI
by Nguyen The Ky
Translated into English by Nguyen Thuy Hoa,
with revisions by John Liddy
Spring is having a long goodbye on the mountain top
Before summer blinds the alley with golden sunlight.
Booc-ma has bloomed hurriedly this morning.
The sound of someone’s syrinx announces the forest.
Does someone go back to see someone?
It is March in the Khau Vai love market
For a dating appointment, no one to buy or sell
On this unviolated patch where nine old heels
Steadfastly wait for a determined ten
Another attempt at half-finished first love,
A chance to rectify mistakes, make memories
Come alive in the afternoon like red fruit
Maturing on the tree before it turns green
Again, like the perennial flow of river
Accumulating on its bank, destiny filled
Or unfulfilled, twists and turns of life.
Oh gracious Khau Vai! Bless the silent
Whisperings in the little corner.
Note: All versions in English by John Liddy from drafts in English by Nguyen Thuy Hoa, based on original poems in Vietnamese by the poets Ly Thai Phuong and Nguyen The Ky.
A Love for Countryside
by Nguyen The Ky
Translated into English by Nguyen Thuy Hoa,
with revisions by John Liddy
Oh homeland! Like a lost person
Amidst city noise, a vainglorious place
With strange people, I miss dearly
A corner of a rice field, a village pond.
Oh homeland! I’m so out of place
On the political stage, a red and black
Hall of fame, pained when thinking
Of mother who tired in the rice field
And father’s blood dyed the battlefield.
Oh homeland, there is river of recollections
Rising towards blue faraway memories.
Once under the moonlight you hesitated,
I thoughtlessly drifted off shore.
Farmers from the countryside go urban,
Buffalo children grow old, others build
Fortifications, many forget the past,
Lose their way. Sadness, joy, dissolution,
Defeat; the soul of the countryside
Is like plants and land: Even when we
Return to the same dust, we become
Part of the long wide river.