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NGUYEN
THI THANH BINH
_______________________________
A
PAIR OF WOMEN’S SHOES MADE IN VIETNAM
Translated by
NGUYEN NGOC BICH
1.
Scoop up a chilly white moon
to know that the day is gone
and that he has also gone far, far away
a sensual lip now lost in mist
a heart slammed shut all smoke now
what’s there left to dress one’s wound
tears scintillating with moon color
and you scintillating with real yearnings
where are you in the waste of ancient seasons
do you spread your wings to catch songlines
the romantic cicadas it seems have quieted
and you too seem missing like a half-moon
like clouds like rain like river like dissipating
like breaking
why imagine that it’s still poetic, dreamlike
still like magnificent visions at night
2.
isn’t it right
that man’s love no longer has a place for you
in his mixed up, multicompartment
heart
let alone a place in his life, nonexistent
isn’t it right
that we cannot open up one more desperate land
for crazy saints have outright sold all clean and
pure loves in this world
men everywhere having taken their cheap pleasure
on the laughters and
cries of Vietnamese women
the death of butterflies afflicted with original
sin
on the S-shaped curves with you in tatters—like
your virginity
your bodies crinkled like that historic blouse
that orgies have torn off time and again
you have seen stiff phalluses that you cannot
enjoy even in an animal sense
you have heard ruffians
breathing on you in Czech and Thai brothels...
no, we cannot go on witnessing such terrible
historic transformations
night butterflies that are not allowed to be human
beings
bodies so wasted they look worse than abandoned
insect skins
hung on the destiny of mad women
who no longer have a summer to find temporary
shelter
an old street corner in death throes
listen to the pleading of a little girl’s hymen
that is beyond repair:
“please spare me, I am
still a virginal soul.”
o imagine those tongues robbed of language to make
themselves understood
eyes where there is no longer any sunlight left
left therein is only the darkness of deaths called
laborers in disguise
sold as brides to Taiwanese / the triumph of
phalluses
the time of gross bulls that pierce the dream of
yellow-skinned girls to the very marrow
isn’t it right
when in another hundred years
they still go on with these selling/buying deals?
woman trafficking / body trafficking / ancestral
land trafficking
everyone, no exception / in this city only seeks
pleasure under the pulling fingers of blue
and pink viagras
the HIV sick / even AIDS deaths apparently could
not drum out the sex urge
for death is universal, sooner or later / whereas
‘om’(1) cafes, ‘om’
beer stands, ‘om’
karaoke houses, ‘om’
Honda rides, ‘om’ lottery sellers... go on living
neither gay nor heterosexual love being able to
unlock the mysteries of nature
then why bother... let’s just say hello at the Y
street corners of the modern world
when the messages of life seem to be, let’s live
and die most unconcernedly, or
alternatively one must die
in order to live
live but why the messages of life seem so hopeless
yet...
you still want me to be the last survivor in this
world
so we can speak about dreams never real
about the meaning of a dewdrop / a falling leaf /
a last December
even though we are unable to keep our promise to
love until that very last December
3.
what can I do, o Adam that I have loved beyond
measure
you who have come and dropped into my ears
courting words sweet as blades
blades that at times have cut my heart into a
million pieces
you have played / licked / rubbed / exploded / psalmodied my body / as a burning of the
sun on top of the sky
we did not just brush lips, o miraculous kiss / we
also exploded like hurricanes gone mad
/ as if on planet earth
there is nothing in between us and Armageddon
do you know
we have peeled each other naked / as if darkness
peeled off the stars / flooded each other
like the rising tide at
the end of the moon cycle
that is why, only when I am next to you, can I
feel alive in both literal and symbolic
senses
and in that way
though life sometimes is cruelly despotic
and I sometimes feel that I have loved you by
mistake
sometimes die of thirst because the love tree
lacks watering
in a certain private space
could it be that you still
masturbate thinking of me?
could it be that you are still the most male among
all the males of this world
could it be that the women in those well-shut
hotel rooms
at another location, under another sky
are taking my place to trace on you the dances of
Nguyen Du’s Kieu
could it be that man only loves without need of
offering or acquisition
it may be that no one needs a pair of shoes
that too many people have fit in
even though on more than one occasion
you have said: you are the
most fitting shoes that I know.
(Translated by NGUYEN NGOC
BICH, January 2005. The original version ‘Doi Giay Phu Nu Made in Vietnam’
was published in Gio Van Magazine, Number 4,
November, 2004, pp 4-7.)
·
THE WRITERS POST (ISSN:
1527-5467),
the magazine of Literature & Literature-in-translation.
VOLUME
7 ISSUE 1 JAN
2005
Editorial
note:
Works published in this issue may be simultaneously published in the printed Wordbridge Magazine Issue 6 January 2005 (ISSN:
1540-1723).
Copyright © Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh
& The Writers Post 1999-2005. Nothing in this issue may be downloaded,
distributed, or reproduced without the permission of the author/ translator/
artist/ The
Writers Post/ and Wordbridge magazine. Creating
links to place The Writers Post or any of its pages within other framesets or
in other documents is copyright violation, and is not permitted.
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