Three Poems by Tue Sy
Translated by Nguyen Ba Chung and Martha Collins
From Deep in the Forest
The deep forest still dreams of city streets
A love distant as cigarette smoke in summer
In an empty space a pensive song rises
Suddenly bursts of hatred chase me away
Standing, you blame the Truong Son range’s torrents
Clouds cover dikes with whiteness in the sky
Từ rừng sâu
Rừng sâu nọ vẫn mơ màng phố thị,
Tình yêu xa như khói thuốc trưa hè.
Trong quãng vắng khúc nhạc sầu tư lự,
Chợt căm thù dồn dập đuổi anh đi.
Em đứng đó hận trường sơn mưa lũ,
Một phương trời mây trắng nhuộm quanh đê.
Promise
After ten years I returned to the old street
Because the Truong Son range has no summer noons
Roads scorched by sun
Roads red with dust
And love in weary eyes that once gleamed
Ước hẹn
Mười năm sau anh phải về thăm phố cũ
Vì Trường sơn không có những trưa hè
Những con đường nắng cháy
Những con đường bụi đỏ
Và tình yêu trong ánh mắt rã rời.
Rooster Crow at Noon
A scraggly rooster calls my soul from the past
To come to this place, abyss of a broken life
The scent of bitter fruit, autumn’s red dust
Oh, sweetness, where is your pretty hair?
Each small sound, lonely, mournfully sad
Clamors fervently in the heart’s wounds
From there I write my note of forever farewell
Oh, sad sunlight, eyes of gratitude, love
A remote siren sounds in the lost noon
Your rosy lips make me wish for a star
The noon is very long but my palm is small
As it reaches out over your high forehead
Tiếng gà gáy trưa
Gà xơ xác gọi hồn ta từ quá khứ
Về nơi đây cùng khốn giữa điêu linh
Hương trái đắng hè thu buồn bụi đỏ
Ơi ngọt ngào đâu mài tóc em xinh
Từng tiếng nhỏ lẻ loi buồn thống thiết
Nghe rộn ràng trong vết lở con tim
Từ nơi đó ta ghi lời vĩnh biệt
Nắng buồn ơi là đôi mắt ân tình.
Còi xa vắng giữa trưa nào lạc lõng
Môi em hồng ta ước một vì sao
Trưa dài lắm nhưng lòng tay bé bỏng
Để vươn dài trên vầng trán em cao.
Art Information
- “Sunset on Mountain of Annamite Range” © Tonbi ko; Creative Commons license.
- Photo of Vietnamese Street © Magalie L'Abbé; Creative Commons license.
- “Rooster” © Claudelle Girard; Creative Commons license.
Born Pham Van Thuong on Feb 15, 1943, in Pakse, Laos, Tue Sy became a monk at a very early age. He was editor in chief of the journal Tu Tuong of Van Hanh University, and in addition to books of poetry, he has published books on Zen, the philosophy of Sunyata, and Du Fu. A well-known dissident in Vietnam, he was imprisoned for fourteen years and remains one of the foremost scholars of Buddhism in the country. English translations of his poems by Nguyen Ba Chung and Martha Collins have appeared in Gulf Coast, Two Lines, Consequence, and elsewhere.
Nguyen Ba Chung is a writer, poet, and translator. He is the co-translator of, among others: Thoi Xa Vang (A Time Far Past); Mountain River: Vietnamese Poetry from The Wars 1948-1993 (University of Massachusetts Press, 1998); Distant Road: Selected Poems of Nguyen Duy (Curbstone Press, 1999); Six Vietnamese Poets (Curbstone Books, 2001); and Zen Poems from Early Vietnam. He served for many years as Research Associate at the William Joiner Institute at the University of Massachusetts–Boston.
Martha Collins is the author of ten collections of poetry, most recently Because What Else Could I Do (Pittsburgh, 2019), Night Unto Night (Milkweed, 2018), and Admit One: An American Scrapbook (Pittsburgh, 2016). She has also co-translated four volumes of Vietnamese poetry, including Black Stars: Poems by Ngo Tu Lap (Milkweed, 2013, with the author). She founded the creative writing program at the University of Massachusetts–Boston and served as Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College for ten years.
