Poems by Dinh Ngoc Diep from Vietnam

 

Poet Dinh Ngoc Diep from Vietnam

His brief biography:

Year of birth: 1956
- Member of Vietnam Writers’s Association (2019).
- Place of birth: ThieuHoa district, ThanhHoa province.
- Current residence: No 20, Le Loi street, Sam Son city, ThanhHoa province.
- Published works: From 2012 to 20207, 7 poetry books have been published: Journey, Journey 2, Journey 3, Journey 4, Journey 5, Journey to choose, Journey 6 - at Literature Publishing House, ThanhHoa Publishing House and Vietnam Writers’s Association Publishing House.
- Awards: 5 Poetry Prizes of ThanhHoa Provincial People's Committee (years: 1986 for the poem To the homeland; 2013 for the Journey poetry collection, 2017 for the Journey4 poetry collection; 2018 for the Journey5 poetry collection and 2021 for poetry book The Journey 6).

His poems:

The magnificence and the crampedness

(Dedicated to world famous photography artist Nick - Ut,

the person who donated the memorabilia camera to the Gallery

“Photographic Memory” by photography artist Pham Cong Thang, Hanoi)

My mind -
The house contains so many memories

Is it cramped? –Yes, it can't be avoided
Each memory inside contains the house
It is magnificent in each artifact
In the gallery Photographic Memory- my brother!

How cramped
The camera of war correspondent Nick - Ut
Looking in, seeing theNapalm fire(*)
The fire hit the skin of the little girl running on the street

Even though it is not the camera Mr. Nick- Ut has just given
The photo "Napalm baby" was born with tragic evidence of History
But sharing the same soul of the person holding the camera is an honest witness
All humanity with you
War must die!

Just yesterday, my brother:
Artist - writer Pham Cong Thang
Standing smiled, hold the hand of Mr. Nick - Ut
Who had come and contributed to the house Memories of legendary cameras
Ten years - steel has been hardened through battlefield bombs
The running baby... now has a family, children
Live peacefully like normal Vietnamese people

But I see: the little girl in the picture...still screaming and running!
Bullets crazily shellin Eastern Europe - Ukraine tragedy
The clothes she wears: the atmosphere surrounding
Your home: Earth
Will give you back your peaceful life!

The treasure camera of Nick - Ut
Exploded memories
Beyond the showroom
Magnificence
My brother!

(*) The famous photo of Nick - Ut, an AFP reporter, took a 9-year-old girl Ngo Kim Phuc in TayNinh in 1972, without a piece of cloth on her body due to the US Napalm bomb, running in panic. The photo prompted protests in the US and around the world, against the US war in Vietnam.


The universe was born from the spawn nest in a pond.

The universe was born from the Big Bang
Boiling. Expansion and cooling
Born of planets, Earth -
The cradle of men and all species

Why not vice versa?
All born from one spawn nest:
Mother channamaculataleaning over the moon and stars
In broad daylight
Surprised to see little red-headed cubs

The cubs don't go to a kindergarten
Growing up, do not study physics, philosophy

Just learning from their mother how to find bait
Big fish eating small fish
Is the principle of nature
Or the nature becomingthe principle

Mother-fish feeding for herself and for her cubs
Attacking small preys
Running away into the mud holes
Camouflaging in moss
In front of the stronger

When there's nothing left to eat in the pond
The mother-fish crossing the border to the shore
Pretending to lie dead
Waiting for the tiny ants
Connecting, climbing, chewing, biting
Ants eats fish
Suddenly the mother-fish squirmed and brought along the ants into the pond water
Fish eats ants

Also. At the scale of Countries
Acrossing the globe
The strongs are always right
A death world. Chaos. Confusing things
But it's obvious when referring to
Truth:
Big fish eats small fish.

So what to do with the Big Bang?
Too complicated
Born the universe - the world - the round earth
Just let everything rush together
Big fish eats small fish

A mother-fish in the pond Also gave a birth.
Also operateing the same world:
The earth was born from … the spawn nestin a pond.


Sometimes

Sometimes a joke turns into a disaster
And a calamity quelles by a joke...

Earth - a slowly exploding mine?
A rotten orange falling?
Because the global disaster has the environment name - ecology
What's wrong... keep blaming God?

Sometimes anobscene scold
Can save an entire army that was besieged, crushed
When the famous General Napoleon - uttered a very obscene word
Then the army that forced him to surrender suddenly fell apart with no way back!

Sometimes an angry sentence
Can save the kingship from the warship wobble
When the Tran Dynasty general shouted: "Vietnam will surrender
Only when my head is slashed to the ground..."

The world is overloaded, abundant of serious things
Being cheated ...turned out humor!
There have been hundreds, thousands of treaties
Pledges to peace again hatched guns and swords (?!)

Sometimes the desire of many people
Will come true
When Humanity is pushed to corner.

Don't blame God - your love and mine are holy
Can't rush to bury... by missing a joke!
Being pushed to the wall, love rising up
Along with the Earth flying!


Drops of burning sound

The Dong Son bronze drumswere lost
from 1500 years, 2500 years ago
Archaeologists found in Malaysia...

On the ocean
ancient merchant ships
Which Vietnamese people?
Hugging the drums for peaceful place?

Which drums used to make white hair of Mong - Nguyen
Which drums slept peacefully under the dark forests of Dai Viet?
the fertile plains of Malaysia
once sounded a mighty tune when tribes fighting

The bronze drums from Dong Son were lost
Vietnam's imprint on the four seas returned
the drums born for the star festivals, why covered in battle bloods
reminded the boat people: no matter what the horizon, they are all in the same cover

The East Sea windstorms has a howl of the Bronze Drum
the day when the invaders robbed Hoang Sa, the drum beat in the hearts
the enemy invadedGac Ma again, the drum beat sounded from the mainland to the sea
hugging a soldier wrapped in red blood like burning

Tra Dong(*) bronze casting village was busy at mornings
recreating the face of the bronze drum with the image of Birds
Men and women on drums are intimating
in the fire of thousand degrees of blood form

Thousands of bronze arrows are to rest in the peaceful museum
hoping the war is only in the memory of time
the bronze sound longing to dance in the flame-shaped eyes
callingthe hearts for the river to rise up
over a thousand years still burning drops of sound...

(*) Tra Dong: Traditional bronze casting village in Dong Son district, ThanhHoa province.



From today I know the fear of flowers

(Carnaval street festival, Sam Son)

From today I know the fear of flowers
fearing to cut and put in a vase, at night blooms a beauty
you see all my - bad - terrible, don't know what to cover

From now on, I know the fear of scallops
how can I put it in a pot of boiling water with mouths openned
you were dancing in the street shells
yesterday died hundred times in the drink I drunk?

The beauty is hidden everywhere
Why are my eyes blind, can only see the bait, can't see you waiting
even in a bush by the road side...

Carnaval, a crowded festival
Ho Xuan Huong street falling in the afternoon, mixed you with the foam
carrying the sea and you rush to the horizon

The flowers from now on are not flowers
giving you all joytears
Sam Son beach, skins and waves are smiling…


(Translated into English by Khanh Phuong)