{"id":11606,"date":"2006-08-10T17:36:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-11T00:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/damau.org\/archives\/11606"},"modified":"2010-04-23T17:13:59","modified_gmt":"2010-04-24T00:13:59","slug":"poems-from-a-work-in-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damau.org\/en\/11606\/poems-from-a-work-in-progress","title":{"rendered":"Poems from a Work in Progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/font><\/em><\/p>\n

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POEMS FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS –<\/font><\/em>
HOME IS WHERE YOU HANG YOURSELF, TRUE CONFESSIONS OF AN ACCIDENTAL CALIFORNIAN<\/strong> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

GRIEF <\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One day I swear
I will write a book
of blank pages. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I am tired of war. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

WAR <\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

They want war.
They want war.
They want war. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

No one wants to read a book about peace. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

PEACE <\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Maxine Hong Kingston wrote
The Fifth Book of Peace
full of people
who will not stop talking
about war. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

WORDS <\/strong><\/p>\n

L\u1eddi d\u1ed1i gian ai b\u1ecf qu\u00ean gi\u1eefa \u0111\u01b0\u1eddng,
em \u0111i qua b\u1ecb th\u01b0\u01a1ng. <\/p>\n

Lies someone left
in the middle of the road
wounding you. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

LOVE <\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Today I found a lover\u2019s slippers
left so long ago
underneath where I sleep,
like empty jars
whose contents
I can no longer taste. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

APRIL <\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I lose one more day crossing
East, looking for home. <\/p>\n

I gain one coming back. <\/p>\n

But even thirty years in America
haven\u2019t amounted to much. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

LANGUAGE <\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You hear my native tongue
and think it liquid\u2014a language
in which even wild grasses
reply in rhyme. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what\u2019s liquid
but here:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

N\u0103m \u0111\u00f3 h\u00e8 v\u1ec1
Hu\u1ebf l\u1eb7ng l\u1edd
X\u00e1c ng\u01b0\u1eddi
Nhi\u1ec1u h\u01a1n x\u00e1c ve ve. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That year, summer came,
Hu\u1ebf turned quiet again.
Human bodies outnumbered
cicada shells. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In your native language
breath is word, is spirit.
In mine, breath is fragility.
Th\u1ec1u th\u00e0o, thoi th\u00f3p.<\/em>
In my tongue, death is constant.
I can\u2019t think of an adequate translation
for what remains: losses, losses. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In Hu\u1ebf, we say, m\u1ea5t m\u00e1t, m\u1ea5t m\u00e1t.<\/em> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I speak of suffering
you alone know I tire of it;
others want me to carry on
so they think they can learn
something of losses \u2014
They could never. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They have stolen countless countries:
yours and mine, and are stealing them
still. They have stolen their own country
from their own people. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And they ask you and me about losses? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Listen: among the leaves, in the wind,
hear still the murmurs of the masses.
Quanh \u0111\u00e2y c\u00f2n ti\u1ebfng oan h\u1ed3n n\u1ec9 non.<\/em> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You learned how to say the rosary
with scented beads. I live still
with the scent of incense burning
at a thousand funerals
that summer in Hu\u1ebf. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I owe you more than apologies,
but no more words. I have talked always
of memory and suffering, given details
of where the skin was torn, the unbelievable,
unhealing scars. And I’ve talked until
I no longer know who you are. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I thank you, for times I couldn’t see
that you remember, times I stayed blind.
My eyes still see nothing but what passed
long ago. I wait for some future that can put
my many parts back together. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But raindrops won’t go back into clouds.
M\u1ea5y thu\u1edf m\u01b0a r\u01a1i n\u01b0\u1edbc ng\u01b0\u1ee3c v\u1ec1 tr\u1eddi.<\/em> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

September was when we last spoke \u2014
but you no longer remember. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When we last spoke, it was of demons
that inhabit the space we exiles
keep out of sight. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The language of exiles
has nowhere to go
but inside.<\/em> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There are two kinds of exiles \u2014
those who insist on the illusions
of the new country, and those
who obsess over what was left behind: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Losses, losses \u2014 m\u1ea5t m\u00e1t. <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Your mother, in her house down south,
belongs to the first kind \u2014 the one with possibilities.
Your father, forever on a plane, hopeless,
back to his island, childhood home,
belongs nowhere. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You who knew this \u2014 how did you let yourself
plunge into me, my past? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I am sorry, we\u2019re stuck
between the two kinds: we\u2019re desperate
for a future, but would not make peace with history.
I am sorry for the hopelessness that is us. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s kind of you to have imagined us \u2014
you, in southern sunlit Andalusian village
still in mourning, besieged by the ghost
of colonial cruelty and the vanquished.
Me, in my white stucco town
beyond Marrakesh, near the sea,
writing to you of desert and water. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Water, water \u2014 N\u01b0\u1edbc, n\u01b0\u1edbc, n\u01b0\u1edbc.<\/em> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Water \u2014 in my language,
N\u01b0\u1edbc<\/em>: a word we use
to mean nation. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Write me another poem, to speak
of our nations, of how
they took yours and mine, water
cut from the source. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Write, even in this language
imposed on so many, but in which
there\u2019s no translation or truthful
words that speak of our condition:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

M\u1ea5t n\u01b0\u1edbc<\/em> \u2014 nation lost. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Such is our obsession \u2014 we\u2019ve been lost
without our countries, and there can be
no substitutes. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You, uprooted, anchorless,
are on to something: the sooner
you disassociate from me,
the sooner you end your sickness,
your obsession with war and losses. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s brave of you to imagine us,
a separate but shared life: binding
our nations\u2019 histories together
to bind us together. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

M\u1ea5y thu\u1edf m\u01b0a r\u01a1i n\u01b0\u1edbc ng\u01b0\u1ee3c v\u1ec1 tr\u1eddi.<\/em>
Raindrops don\u2019t go back into clouds. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We make plans and rescind,
we are exiles \u2013 our lives
consist only of memories \u2014 qu\u00e1 kh\u1ee9<\/em>. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The language of exiles is spoken
in the past tense \u2014 qu\u00e1 kh\u1ee9. <\/p>\n

Sometimes, tired, I let it be:
things were the way they were.
Men act as they will, some
with kindness, some with cruelty. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We thought we could act with love,
the way I chose to sleep on the side
where the moon was luminous,
leaving you the darkness
I thought would soothe your nights. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In your sleep, you repaired to a language
I didn\u2019t understand. Your words,
like lovers intertwined, danced
with the rhymth of me
breathing, breathing \u2014 thoi th\u00f3p,<\/em>
dancing in time with my sighs. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Outside, cactus flowers bloomed
on the fire escape\u2014but I shielded you,
keeping quiet about how they reminded me
of flashing flares, exposing men in hiding,
exposing the killings of my youth. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But that part of history, even if I tried,
I cannot hide from you. You take it
inside, make my nightmares yours.
At some point, we became nomads.
We became nomads even in our sleep,
our roots yanked from us. M\u1ea5t n\u01b0\u1edbc.<\/em> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Conquistadors, men in green berets,
dark suits, stripped us \u2014 nation lost. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Afterwards, you went from barrio
to barrio, trying to turn the language
of exiles into poetry. And me, from single
whitewashed rooms of cold cement
to terraced apartments far away,
alone to face my own solitude. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Homes that cannot be home. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We became nomads, modern cities
are the desert we cross, not so much
for salvation, nor for subsistence:
we cross our endless deserts, looking
for ourselves. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You who know this
should have known
love would have been impossible. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We would have been impossible. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The sky changes hues, the moon turns pale,
cactus flowers shrivel after their one night
and fall. My tongue has spoken every inch of
your skin, and I am ready to recede. Before dawn,
we go back to mute despair. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Neither love nor future is possible. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I can only see the past,
and would not see you
until you are no longer here. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We types of exiles live backwards. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hu\u1ebf, to go backwards, is where
my mother was born. You would like
the Perfume River, although in Hu\u1ebf
we would always prefer its native self,
s\u00f4ng H\u01b0\u01a1ng: a river that flows
unrushed, out to sea, as if the town\u2019s
one thousand years of sorrow
never entered its currents. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Upon the sidewalks, in the shade
of the old flame trees, lovers whisper
lines they think original, unaware
of all the ghosts. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hu\u1ebf is where mother met father,
fell in love, and I died my first death,
that spring, when it wasn\u2019t enough
for soldiers to kill in the battlefields. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My losses began then, and haven\u2019t ended. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I carry you still,
the way I carry Hu\u1ebf. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But you and I carry the things
we love as we do losses \u2014 m\u1ea5t m\u00e1t,
deep in a place exiles
keep forever out of sight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GRIEF <\/p>\n

One day I swear
\nI will write a book
\nof blank pages. <\/p>\n

I am tired of war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":469,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"h5ap_radio_sources":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[221,222,22,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cac-so-da-mau-dinh-ky","category-da-mau-so-1","category-sang-tac","category-tho"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damau.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damau.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damau.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damau.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/469"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damau.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damau.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11706,"href":"https:\/\/damau.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11606\/revisions\/11706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damau.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damau.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damau.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}