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Lift Up Your Face and Let the Rain Fly Away

[Đọc bản tiếng Việt của Bùi Vĩnh Phúc: Hãy ngước mặt và thả bay đi những cơn mưa]

To remember a fifty-year distance.
And to close that cycle.

 

 

  

Bent Tree, c. 1923-24, by Chaim Soutine

 

 

Foreword

A sound, an image, even a scent—any fragment from the outside world—can stir the human soul, leading it into a masquerade of old days. Of youth. Of the past. Of first dreams.

It might be a few notes from an old song. A fleeting image on the street or in a newspaper.. Or maybe it’s the shift in the weather. A chilly breeze. A gentle rain.

Each contains the warmth and fire of life—just waiting for the strike of a match.

In that wave of longing, I stumbled upon some of my old verses—lines tinged with a wistful chill, with pain, and the silhouettes of dear friends, heard through the quiet hush of falling rain. The reels begin to roll once more within the soul.

(…) sáng nay có cơn mưa nhỏ / bay qua thành phố buồn hiu / thổi tung từng hạt ngọc đỏ / trên đầu đám cỏ dập dìu // có con chim xanh rời tổ / đi tìm đôi cánh thiên thần / bay vào cuộc đời lố nhố / lòng chim có thấy phân vân // bạn bè thôi còn mấy đứa /như trăm sợi nắng chia miền / bếp lòng ai còn ấm lửa / giữa cơn gió lạnh truân chiên // mầu xanh mầu xanh trên tóc / có còn bát ngát ruộng đồng / mắt môi ngày nào mới mọc / có còn trong buổi rạng đông // như nỗi cô đơn rất vàng / rót vào lòng anh nhè nhẹ / là mùa thu mới vừa sang / thả rơi cánh hoa be bé (…) (Giã Từ)

[(…) this morning a soft rain / drifted over a lonely city / scattering red pearls / atop the swaying grass // a blue bird left its nest / seeking angel wings / soared into a jumbled world / did its heart feel torn? // old friends—how many remain? / like sunlight split across lands / whose hearth still holds a flame / against the harsh and shifting winds? // the green on your hair / was once boundless as fields / the eyes and lips of dawn / do they still bloom each morning? // like a deep golden loneliness / poured gently into my heart / it is autumn just arriving / dropping a tiny blossom (…) (Farewell) ]

These lines rekindle the warm breath of fire from friendships, companions, and those long-gone days.

Gió thổi bồng bồng / mây trắng như bông / nhớ xưa một thuở / bạn bè rất ngông / bạn bè rất mộng / ngồi buồn đấu láo / cũng đã nên thơ / chuyện ran như pháo / chứ đâu bây giờ / ta rất trơ vơ / giọt buồn không vỡ / lớn mãi trong ta / đám mây xa nhà / trong chiều vô xứ / như kinh vô tự / bay mãi một đời / chiều ơi chiều ơi (Bạn Bè).

[The wind floats on / clouds soft as cotton / once upon a time / remembering once / friends wild and dreamy / talking nonsense idly / and somehow it became poetry / our laughter rang like fireworks / unlike now / where I sit alone / sorrow unfurls but never bursts / swelling inside me / like a cloud torn from home / in an exile dusk / like a wordless sutra / flying endlessly through life / oh dusk, oh dusk (Friends)]

Rainy skies also remind us of old classrooms.

buồn ta xa nhà
đêm nghe mưa qua
lòng ơi rất nhớ
những ngày đã xa
mưa trên phố cũ
mưa trên mái xưa
lòng ơi tưởng nhớ
những buổi giao mùa
ta ngồi trong lớp
học trò mắt đen
dòng mưa áo trắng
học trò áo len
cười hoài nụ nhỏ
thầy trò rất quen
các em dưới đó
ta đứng trên này
dòng mưa bạch ngọc
rót đầy cơn say

ta giờ nhớ mãi
các em áo bay
ta giờ mới biết
buồn dài hơn say.
(Học Trò)

[ lonely far from home / night echoes with rain / oh heart, remember / those faraway days / rain on old streets / rain on the old roof / oh heart, remember / those changing seasons / I sat in class / students with black eyes / white jade rain outside / students in wool sweaters / smiling small smiles / teacher and students, close as kin / you down there / me up here / rain poured like pearls / filling me with a quiet intoxication / Now I always remember / your flowing áo dài / Now I truly know / longing outlasts intoxication. (Students) ]

Or, sometimes, all it takes is an open book, and everything in life may stir again in the soul:

ta ngồi đọc sách
trong tiếng chiều về
đời còn lê thê
trôi hoài một nhánh
buồn ta trăm mảnh
trên cõi tình này
người cũ chiều nay
trong trang sách mở
đời như đồ cổ
sao vẫn thiết tha
lần trong sách nhoà
người xưa lớp lớp
vỗ về trong ta

chiều bay trăm tà
ta còn đọc sách
(Đọc Sách)

[ I sit reading / to the sound of evening / life still drags on / flowing like a stream / my sorrow in fragments / scattered across this realm of love / old figures /
appears in this faded page / life like antiques / yet still so dear / sifting through smudged words / ghosts of old faces / soothing me gently /

Twilight spreads its sails / and I go on reading. (Reading Books) ]

Yes—sometimes it only takes a few drifting drops of rain, or a stray thought from a page, and suddenly we are able to see everything again. Inside us, a melody from days long gone begins to softly play.

But then, in the course of life, those old rains were no longer gentle, no longer brushed past with a touch of poetry as they once did in the days of youth. At times, the sound of rain, the streams of rain, carried within them a sense of desolation—a looming threat, both seen and unseen. The rain wore a different face. One masked in fire. And in the color of night.

Mưa xiên thẳng tim
Xiên thẳng vào mầu chiều
Đã dần dần chuyển sang mầu tro xám
Bí ẩn và hoang lạnh
Như những bước chân mèo hoang
Mặt trời
Trái cây thơm mọng ngày hôm qua
Giờ cũng đã ủng chín
Rơi trong vườn đêm
Một trăm cơn mưa sắt thép
Đã chụp xuống chúng ta
Và gió
Đã bứt tung bè bạn như những chiếc lá
Tan tác. Dạt trôi.
Và mất hút trên các nẻo đời (…)
(Một trăm cơn mưa)

[Rain pierced straight through the heart / Straight through the twilight hue /
That slowly turned to the ash-grey of cinders / Mysterious and forlorn
Like the stealthy steps of a feral cat /
The sun / Once ripe and fragrant like fruit yesterday
Now lies rotting / Fallen in the garden of night
A hundred iron rains / Have descended upon us
And wind / Has torn our friends like leaves
Scattered. Drifting. / Vanished across the paths of life (…)
(One Hundred Rains) ]

What I saw again in the writing below was born from such small flames—yet warm with the breath of memory. Of a time of youth. Dreamy, idealistic, passionate. Romantic. And sorrowful.

It is precisely these small things that help form the meaning of life. That help form each one of us today. To remind us that life is not tallied solely by great and weighty matters.

Allow me to offer these reflections to all who still sense the gentle breath of that old flame. That invisible flame, which from time to time still crackles faintly somewhere within our hearts. Especially on days when the rain drifts, and the wind stirs.

bvp
(XII, 2024)

https://vanviet.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Just-Before-the-Rain-Falls_sơn-dầu-của-Karla-Nolan.jpg

 

 

1.

Now, here, autumn has come.

This morning, a fine mist of rain drifted over the coastal city where I now live. It brought with it a coolness, and a tender, musty scent—remnants of past rains lingering in my memory. The streaks of rain this early morning fell like fingers upon old piano keys. The rain’s threads crossed and struck diagonally across the soul. Rain threads? Or the tender fingers of remembrance?

Autumn. It rains. It rains.

Rain is spinning threads, then softens into a gauzy white mist. Fluttering. The rain in California taps lightly on windowpanes, then bursts into long trails of water trickling down the glass. And then, the rain drums louder—urgently—like hands knocking insistently on the old, rotting door of time. The water smears. The pounding rain grows more demanding.

And the door to the past opens.

 

2.

Once upon a time, there was rain in Saigon.

The rains had wrapped around my innocent childhood. Then that childhood grew up—at times green like leaves, at times withered and tattered— and still looked up at the sudden rains pouring down. There were rains that came down like umbrellas, pushing life into dreams. There were rains that fell like invisible threats, saying I would have to keep trudging through them forever. Rain beat down on one’s head when lost and alone. A shadow at the edge of the sky. A sliced moon. And the forest at dusk: cold, and dim.

There were childhood rains. Afternoons when the rain came pouring down over the small alleyway, I and my gang of friends would rush out to bathe in it. In the rain, the small alleyways of the neighborhood suddenly transformed into another world. The rain seemed to set the stage for a play in which children became the most eager actors. The rain poured down like a waterfall. The little alleyways flooded. Many children lay down flat on those narrow alleys paved with cement, where the rainwater hadn’t yet had time to drain and rose up like a river in flood season.

Some children—well-behaved—wore shorts. Most wore nature’s clothing and dove in to swim. Many lay on their backs, mouths open to catch the rainwater. That boundless feeling, he remembers forever. He lay there, mouth open, gulping down the rain like a fish. The sheets of water roared down from the sky. Fragrant and icy cold. Around the body, layers of water jostled and rocked. That thrill of being naked in the rain only comes to a person once in life. If you miss it, you’ll never again have the chance to live that kind of overflowing moment.

Rain also crashed down from the roof gutters of neighboring houses. He stood right under the spout, where rainwater poured from head to toe. He rubbed the water off his face with both hands, jumping up and down from delight. Sometimes, little girls, four or five years old—his age then—would run over, asking to share the rain gutter he had claimed. Remembering their bright faces, those eyes clearer than the rain, he sees again the beautiful memories holding hands as they return.

When he grew a bit older and his parents no longer let him bathe in the rain, on such downpour days, the boy would sit folding paper boats and float them down the alley. Those boats, drifting swiftly on the water, carried off to the ocean of his heart the innocent childhood dreams of old. The water sped on—where to? Those tiny boats—who knows to what shores in life they traveled? What did they become after parting from him nearly sixty years ago, while he still sits here?

I still sit in this realm of life watching the rains fall, pattering on the days of childhood and youth.

When grown up, people encounter different rains in life.

There are days one walks through fine morning rain and remembers the glistening tears of a girl. To live, one shouldn’t be too weak—but also shouldn’t be afraid to face one’s sadness. Living does not mean always standing upright, chest out, eyes fixed firmly ahead. There are times, to live fully, one must be able to feel heartache over a pure drop clinging at the corner of someone’s eye. Then that teardrop blurs into a mist as one sets out. Rain in the dawn. And the train whistle cries out, melancholy and urgent, calling one to depart…

Still, I want to remember Saigon, those rainy afternoons on the river. Rain falling steadily across a vast stretch of water. At that time, you must have been around seventeen or eighteen, weren’t you? A riverside teashop at dusk—just you and me. The owner had gone back into her bamboo hut. Only the lonely sound of rain remained. Rotten logs drifted along the white river. The steady rain crisscrossed with longing. Anh ôm em trong tay mà đã nhớ em ngày sắp tới.[ I held you in my arms and already missed you for the coming days.] [1] The church bell echoed, ringing out through the rain like a vast, white melody. Gusts of wind flung rain against us. Your hair fluttered wet in the rain, soft. You placed your cold hands in mine. You whispered that you were no longer afraid of the rain. I loved you so deeply for those pitiful words. Even now, trudging through the rains of my life, I still remember your quiet, trusting words from that rainy afternoon on the river. Yes, all the rains make us stronger, I still remind myself of that.

There were rains pouring down on Saigon in the afternoons when earth and sky were golden and drifting in sunlight. People rummaged through books on Cong Ly Street or sat eating green papaya salad with dried beef, or bánh cuốn with Vietnamese pork rolls or shrimp cakes on Pasteur Street. Suddenly, a rainstorm would fall.

Rain pounded down. People stretched out canvas or nylon tarps to cover from the rain. Oh, those sunshower rains. The sunshower rains made people stand or sit huddled together. All the strangers and passersby on that corner of Saigon pressed close to each other. Rain fell in loud drops on the soaked canvas sheets strung up above. The tarps grew heavier with each moment. Beneath the tarps, under the rains pouring from the sky, people kept on eating green papaya salad with dried beef or steamed rolls with pork dipped in chili fish sauce, exclaiming at the slanting rains outside. Honda and PC50 motorbikes rushed past. The leaves turned a green taut with vitality as the heavens sent their love to the earth. Oh, those rain-drenched leaves. I loved those rain-drenched leaves too much. They shivered, happy in the rain’s overwhelming embrace. When the rain ends, they’ll be lush, tender, and waving playfully in the wind… The soft patter of rain above like that—just ten, fifteen, twenty minutes—is already beautiful enough. Then the sky clears. Saigon resumes its normal rhythm.

There were afternoons or evenings in Saigon when I was sitting on the rooftop reading, and suddenly the rain would start tapping lightly on the tin and plastic roofing overhead.

That solitary reading room perched high on the rooftop, when it rained, brought me vast and strange drifting sensations. The rooftop was a large rectangular space with walls waist-high. A small part of it was built into a reading room. My siblings and I had boarded it up with wood like a little hut. Next to it was a large water tank, along with a surrounding space enclosed with a door you could latch if you wanted. If you wanted to bathe, you could bathe. Wash clothes, sing, do whatever in there. Sometimes, when I felt the urge, I would go in there to try out my voice and hear it echo strangely. The rest of the rooftop was completely open. Sheets of tin and plastic were roofed over concrete pillars to shield from sun and rain. From the reading hut, I could look out in three directions into the open space. My mother and my siblings planted all sorts of flowers and plants on that rooftop. In the mornings, birds would gather and chirp. That was when I would climb up and wait to see the first red rays of the new sun slowly tear apart the milky white curtain in the east. The early scent of the plants was fresh and peaceful. At night, I would often hang a hammock and lie there listening to the street noises gradually fade below. And night itself, silent, like a soft brown velvet cloth, would unfold.

Let’s return to that earlier pattering rain.

Sitting in the reading hut (or imagine it as a herder’s shack, if you like to picture yourself as Tô Vũ [2] tending goats or some duck herder), I looked out on three sides at the rain blowing in. The wind rushed along with the rain, thrashing and soaking the distant rows of trees, blurred and hidden in the downpour. It wasn’t rain—it was rows upon rows of galloping hooves in the trails of falling water. It was a storm of wings flapping in the rising winds. The trees and flowers in my rooftop garden were torn and battered too, dripping and tattered under the enveloping rain. Sitting inside the little reading hut, amidst the sounds and fury of earth and sky, amidst the blinding white torrents of rain, I opened A Tear and a Smile by Kahlil Gibran to read a passage describing the footsteps of rain. Or I opened The Rain on the Roof by Coates Kinney, or The Voice of the Rain by Walt Whitman, to listen to how poets spoke of rain. And then I found it all unreasonable. So I closed the book, stripped off my shirt, went out and stood with arms wide open at the rooftop edge, letting sheets of rain, driven by the wind, lash against my body. I closed my eyes and shouted out Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa into the rain. And felt the rain pour over and engulf my body. The rain soaked deep into my very roots.

Later, thinking back on such rains, tangled in emotion and memory, I wrote this poem:

Và những nhịp vó buồn

Mây đưa dạt đám hoàng hôn
Vào hàng cây vút bồn chồn bóng đêm
Vàng thau. Và những âm mềm
Của chiều giăng mái trên hiên giọt đời
Những sông buồn của muôn nơi
Đổ vào tịch mịch. Biển. Thời gian quên
Trăng hồng. Thắm. Nhịp chèo lên.
Con thuyền lạc gió trôi miền không hư
Quạnh không tiếng gọi của mùa
Đàn mưa bạch. Trắng trời. Như vó buồn.
Một bầy ngựa trắng từ phương
Xa, mờ, phủ mộng, nhịp cuồng. Và đêm.
Người ngồi trong cõi nhớ quên
Lần tay sờ, kiếm những miền thực, hư.
(2017)

[ And the Rhythms of Sorrowful Hooves

Clouds drift and push the dusk / Into the restless shadows of trees /
Flickering gold and brass. And the soft tones /

Of the evening stretch across eaves—drops of life /
The sorrowed rivers of every land / Flow into stillness. The sea. Time forgets /
Pink moon. Blooming. The rhythm of oars rise. /
The boat blown by the wind into oblivion / Desolate with the season’s call /
The white herd of rain. Sky-bleached. Like mournful hooves. /
A herd of white horses from afar / Blurred, cloaked in dreams, galloping wild. And night. / One sits within the realm of forgetting and remembrance /
Reaching, searching for realms real and unreal.
(2017) ]

Yes, those overflowing, erupting rains have kept returning endlessly in my memory ever since. I keep dreaming of rain. Dreaming of myself in a high house, wind-blown and lonely, beside the sea. Evening. The urgent crashing of waves on the rocky shore. The house perched precariously on the cliff, layer upon layer of wind howling through. I’m sitting again on the rooftop. The rooftop has no walls around it. I sit alone, listening to the wind and watching the rain fall in every direction. I no longer stand with arms wide, shouting Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa like the old days at home. Instead, I lean against the railing, scanning for signs of life. All around, only white sheets of rain. White arrows from the sky seem to stab straight into the earth. Arrows falling ceaselessly, planting themselves again and again. These colorless images in the dream are like a black-and-white film without sound. But precisely because it’s black and white, and silent, it delivers a devastating emotional effect…

Rainstorms—forever haunting me—have become something both intimate and brutal. Brutal and intimate like the fate of a human being.

And then there were those autumn evenings. September, October in Saigon. The city soaked in water. Rain. Saigon shrouded in red and green traffic light mist. The rain was neither heavy nor light, just enough to drench the streets and the leaves lining the roads. I put on the oversized army raincoat, pulled the hood low over my head, and climbed onto the dusty Honda Dame to begin looping around the city. From the alley, I chased the rain starting from the Number Five railroad gate on Phan Thanh Gian Street, past Saint Paul Hospital. Past Gia Long High School. At Duy Tan, I turned right, passed the Law School, circled the Soldier’s Monument roundabout, and continued straight to Notre Dame Cathedral. Then to Nguyen Du Street. Past Taberd School. Right onto Hai Ba Trung. Left onto Don Dat. Reached Saint Paul Girls’ School. Left onto Cuong De Street, passing the Carmelite Monastery, Saint Joseph Seminary. Past the Pharmacy School, the Faculty of Letters, the Agriculture School, back to Dinh Tien Hoang… And so, I tucked my legs up on the footrests, one hand in my pocket, hood drooped low, riding through the city in loops.

That city, in the rain, looked so quiet and gentle. Not noisy, frantic, or frenzied like usual. In the rain, the streets became hushed. All sounds faded away. Only the patter of raindrops tapping on the pavement remained. Through my glasses, the green and red lights shimmered and blurred in a strangely magical way. Alone, I rode slowly through those empty streets. The damp fragrance of flowers and leaves floated softly, naturally, loosening something inside the heart. That scent seemed to awaken a few faint memories in life. Passing by Notre Dame Cathedral, a strange, sacred feeling enveloped me. It felt as if the pure waters falling from the sky, through the slanted curtain of rain, had awakened the old red bricks—centuries old—used to build and pave the cathedral’s surroundings. They stirred, startled, as if just awakening from a dream. Each brick now carried a renewed vitality. Something moved, escaped from the aged red clay. Perhaps a small sprout was cracking through, somewhere, from one of those bricks, and stirred something in my heart. The faded green moss was clothing them in a new life. Everything stirred gently within the heart. The very atoms that made up those old bricks were quivering. I could hear the whole universe suddenly rustling and stirring within me.

On those chilly, rain-softened Saigon nights, I felt a deeper affection for Saigon. I understood Saigon more. It was not a place of glittering lights and decadent music pulsing from the corners of Tu Do or Hai Ba Trung Streets near Ben Chuong Duong. It was not just a showcase of velvet trousers and silk dresses swaying in market crowds. Saigon was, and most truly was, a place to remember. I remembered Saigon even while still living in it, still breathing the fragrance of its grass and flowers, its sun and rain.

Saigon in the rain. That image is gentle, kind, pitiful, and the truest feeling I hold for that faraway, old city. Oh! The rain has flown past decades already! Those old rain-laced days.

There were times when I and a few friends, with our students, sat in the pavilion at Club Nautique in Thanh Da, watching the rain crossing in all directions. The downpour spread white and dense, forming threads of fine, clear silk linking sky and earth. The earth, the sky, and space became a forest of dream-woven rain. Far off was the river. The river rang out like a melody of pure white. The river sounded like the keys of a piano. Rain river. Rain river. The rain beat rhythmically on the soft waves and leafy winds. A girl student cradled her guitar and sang: “Gọi mùa thu lãng quên vào tiếng mưa rơi êm đềm. Trời còn mưa ướt thêm, cho dài ngày tháng không tên.” [“Calling forgotten autumn into the gentle falling rain. The rain keeps falling, to lengthen these nameless days.”] A friend sang: “Em đi về cầu mưa ướt áo. Đường phượng bay mù không lối vào. Hàng cây lá xanh gần với nhau.” [“You walked home, crossing the bridge, the rain fluttered on your ao dai. The flamboyant flowers covered the entrance. Leaves clustered, close together.”] I sang: “Sầu thôi xuống đầy. Làm sao em nhớ. Mưa ngoài sông bay…” [“Sadness sinks deep. How could you remember? The rain on the river flies…”] And Tuan strummed the guitar—those beautiful classic pieces. Now. Now, how many of my friends are dead? How many still wander in aching restlessness through life? All of us were torn apart by those sharp rains filled with the fire and blood of hatred. Some of those student girls died. Some married and followed their husbands to sun-bleached lands, leaving behind those misty rains of old in memory. Some fled by boat and survived. Some fled and met pirates. I grieve for my friends and students. In those rainy days, my friends and I still had black hair. The students’ eyes were clear as if untouched by the faintest wisp of smoke. Only the drifting rain outside wandered into their eyes, as they played guitar and sang, innocently, green as spring leaves. Now…

Each of us must share the fate of our homeland. If I speak of the river, of the rain, it is to speak of the memories and destiny of my friends, of my brothers, my sisters. The rivers that divided us, and the rains that slashed down upon each of our shared and separate fates.

 

3.

Later, the rains continued to follow me as I drifted across the vast black ocean. These were not the rains that swept slantwise across Saigon’s turquoise sky. Not the rains that scattered tamarind leaves like green rice grains, fragrant with memory. Not the soft, floating rains from Monet’s or Van Gogh’s paintings that I once loved. Not the rains tapping on windowpanes with the lonely melancholy of a Hemingway or Nguyễn Đình Toàn story. Nor the autumn silhouettes of rain haunting Cung Tiến’s music… These were not even the lục bát [3] rains of Trần Huyền Trân: “Mưa bay trắng lá rau tần. Thuyền ai bốc khói xa dần bến mưa…” [Rain drizzles pale across the crown daisy / Someone’s boat disappears in the mist, gradually moving away from the rainy dock… ]

Nor were they the footsteps of rain introduced by Kahlil Gibran:

“… I touch gently at the windows with my
Soft fingers, and my announcement is a
Welcome song. All can hear, but only
The sensitive can understand.

The heat in the air gives birth to me,
But in turn I kill it,
As woman overcomes man with
The strength she takes from him.”

Those rains were beautiful. They are a part of our memory. But in life, there are surely other kinds of rain. Dark rains. Rains that shred. I want to return to say: the rains on that sea were like intimate summons of destiny.

Beneath the immense heavens, the boat fleeing Vietnam crossing the sea was no more than a crumpled, brittle leaf. A dry leaf, too fragile, too thin to withstand the storms of the ocean. And a human being—no more than a grain of sand in that endless expanse.

In the night, the sky was as dark as ink. People at sea had no idea where they were going, where they had come from, or where they might end up. Sky and sea, one indistinguishable pitch-black hue. He floated with the engine-dead boat for days, feeling as if he could hear the echoing voices of countless memories. Voices calling from the deep, from the bottomless dark beneath the water.

And the rain.

At first, it was a light drizzle, and he still sat outside the cabin, mouth open to catch the rain. In his hunger and thirst, the raindrops were sweet and cool like orange juice. Then suddenly, columns of rain, masses of rain, an entire ocean of rain came crashing down. He rushed below deck. The darkness deepened. The rain made the world even blacker. The groaning creak of the aged, frail boat—carrying over fifty souls—was a nightmarish sound from hell. Creak. Creak. The boat, its wooden hull rotting, seemed like it could shatter into a thousand pieces at any moment. Rain still poured down in torrents upon the withered vessel. The boat rocked violently from side to side. People fell into one another. Panic. Women and girls, hair clinging to their temples, pale-faced, eyes wide like hunted animals. Some vomited all over the boat. Men clung to their loved ones as if trying to shield them from an inevitable disaster. The hull sprang a leak. All the young men took turns bailing water from the hold, trying to keep the fragile boat from sinking into the black sea. Creak. The groaning of the boat matched the rhythm of its heaving in the storm. The storm lantern in the wheelhouse swayed, flickered, then went out. Wind, rain, and waves now had free rein to scream and batter the thin shell of the boat. Children cried out, calling for their mothers, voices rising through the chaos…

He had survived such a storm. A Level 5 typhoon. He felt fate looming. Faces of friends, family, the dead, all came back.

And yet, for some reason, in the midst of that terrifying sea storm, not knowing if he—or the people sharing this doomed vessel—would survive, a line of prose suddenly flashed through his mind. Very quickly, as if in a trance. A passage he had read somewhere, perhaps long ago. A fragment from Federico García Lorca, about New York—and about rain:

“There is nothing more poetic and terrible
than the skyscrapers’ battle with the heavens that cover them.
Snow, rain, and mist highlight, drench, or conceal the vast towers,
but those towers, hostile to mystery and blind to any sort of play,
shear off the rain’s tresses
and shine their three thousand swords
through the soft swan of the fog.”

Many years after that journey, in America, I stumbled across the passage again. English translation. I had read it in Saigon, before 1975. [4] I still don’t know why, amid the black, knife-sharp, furious rain on the sea, my mind would leap to such a wild association—as though in a fugue state, in the grip of desperation—yes, my heart (or mind) weaving, just briefly, a tenuous thread between the towers of New York in Lorca’s imagination, and then in mine, in his, and the frail boat, like a dry, brittle leaf, in the heart of a raging storm. Was it a brush with Thanatos? The death instinct of the unconscious, balancing Eros, the instinct for life. Love. Pleasure. Existence. Or perhaps, it was that early immersion in the romanticism of literature that had thrust me (no, him) into such an irreconcilable web of images. If any comparison could be made, however roughly, it was like a bullfight—where the bull, snorting smoke and stamping, charges forward, and I/we (or that staggering boat) were already wounded, about to collapse in the arena—and worst of all, without the sacred red cloth of the warrior in hand.

The sea storms on those escape nights reminded me of the rains in the desolate highland jungles of our homeland, where a friend—lucky to be released—once returned from and told us stories. In those places, fathers, brothers, friends lacked even enough rice to stand upright; yet in the toxic rains, many still hunched under the burden of wood and trees. Jungle rains—javelins thrown by the cruel fate of Vietnam. How many have died beneath those cursed rains of the dark forest? The fate of Vietnam—on the raging sea, in the deadly jungles, on high cliffs and deep mountains—has become the fate of human conscience, the fate of the heart of humanity.

And then, the first night—after the storm, the wind, the rain, and the will of human beings had pushed him and his wretched companions onto that Malaysian island—the sea rain still followed, lurking throughout the night.

There was a stilt house under construction right by the shore. Its walls open to the wind. After climbing the wooden steps, everyone collapsed together. Men and women, young and old, the elderly and the children—all lay as if dead. Their belongings strewn beside them. Those with raincoats wrapped them tight against the gusts and damp. Those without curled up and endured the cold.

He lay under that bewildered sky. Wind, rain, thunder, and lightning raged all night. He realized then, with a piercing clarity, that he was now beyond the reach of homeland’s protection.

The rains of Saigon no longer dripped gently down. This was the coast of Malaysia. And out there, the rain came crashing ashore with wind and wave.

In the flashes of lightning appeared a forest of white coconut palms writhing in the storm. Rain battered the palm leaves. Rain struck the waves. The vast sounds echoed within him, awakening shattered images of the homeland. The coconut grove still thundered its crashing, mad rhythm in the stormy rain and sea wind. That rain and wind ran across his face that night, blurring the past into streaks.

I was no longer my old self.

And the homeland was now lost in the rain.

 

4.

Now it is autumn here.

Or has winter already arrived?

The drizzle has passed over the city and fallen toward the sea.

This morning, with the rain, I suddenly caught again the scent of an old, musty happiness. A gentle kind of musty happiness. Happiness is not only made of joys. It is also made of sorrows. Happiness is not only smiles. It is also tears. It is bliss, but at the same time, it is pain. Happiness is all of these, woven together into the garment of our memories.

Sometimes, memories are the fingers of rain.

To me, the rains of this life have carried within them both luminous and dim forms of happiness. The luminous happiness looks like drops of water shimmering with the seven colors of the rainbow, still clinging to the tip of a leaf. The dim happiness resembles a tiny candle I light in the desolate depths of my heart to look back at the loneliness of this life.

There are joys we sang together when our homeland blossomed in celebration. And there are joys we held for each other in times of ruin, or during our exile. Happiness is when one can see beauty in any moment, any chance encounter in life. Happiness is a kind of flower that sometimes sends forth a fragrance born of heartbreak and sorrow. It is a calling echoing from the deepest reaches of the human soul.

Rain of the past.

Rain of the past, where wishes for happiness once burst and bloomed in the open sky—when will I ever again hear your voice amid the tangled, shadowy streets of life?

Bùi Vĩnh Phúc
Tustin Ranch, Calif.
December, 2015. Revisited, July, 2025
(written along with the past in H. Beach, 1985)


 

Notes:

(1) Poem by Thanh Tâm Tuyền, from the piece “Dạ Khúc” (Nocturne). Original lines:
“Anh là thằng điên khùng / Ôm em trong tay mà đã nhớ em ngày sắp tới”
(“I am a crazy fool / Holding you in my arms yet already missing you in the days to come.”) Later, Phạm Đình Chương set this poem to music under the title “Dạ Tâm Khúc.” The word “Tâm” in this title is taken from Thanh Tâm Tuyền’s real name, Dzư Văn Tâm, and was inserted into the original title. Still, if one wants to interpret it literarily, the song’s name can be understood as “The Nocturnal Song of the Heart,” or, rather, “Song of the Night Heart,” where, according to Sino-Vietnamese grammar, “Dạ” (night) modifies “Tâm” (heart), and “Dạ Tâm” modifies “Khúc” (song).

(2) For nineteen long years, Tô Vũ (Su Wu), a Han envoy, endured desolate northern lands, his noble spirit unbroken. Sent on a mission of peace, he became a shepherd of silent goats, his tattered imperial staff his only companion, a constant reminder of unwavering loyalty to his homeland. Through icy winds and harsh solitude, his steadfast heart never faltered, eventually guiding him back to a grateful empire, a living legend of integrity and enduring hope.

(3) Six-eight verse. “Lục bát” is a traditional Vietnamese poetic form, literally meaning “six-eight,” referring to the alternating lines of six syllables (lục) and eight syllables (bát). The poem typically consists of a series of couplets in this 6-8 syllable pattern, forming a flowing, melodious rhythm.

(4) Extracted from a 1933 interview of Federico García Lorca by Luis Méndez Domínguez about Lorca’s poetry collection Poet in New York. The interview response was woven from several prose poems Lorca recalled and recited.

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Phần Góp Ý/Bình Luận


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