Trần Mộng Tú
[ Translated from the Vietnamese by Đặng Vũ Vương ]
He already got away from the war
But the war did not get away from him
It was just like a branding iron
pressed red hot against his chest and deep into his heart
He bent down and carefully peeled off the scabs
the torn layers turned into loose leaflets
the leaflets full of injury
The desolate abandoned villages
The B52's bomb craters pockmarking the earth
Not a single child glimpsed
Not even an elderly in sight
Is there anything as painful?
is there anything as heartrending?
that amongst the desolation and the ruins
to see a man carrying a corpse on his back
amid a fierce blinding windstorm
in an empty deserted Khmer temple
A child of God
entrusting Buddha the soul of his fallen comrade
Alas, this is war
that wound of the century
Were God and Buddha together into there too?
An unnamed war
A death without brand name
where a soldier on this side would be called a foe on the opposite side
humans are no longer afraid of wild beasts
but they do fear their own kind
There are matters during one entire lifetime
that are beyond our comprehension
why is that “be born in the North to die in the South”
an exhortation for killing sprees?
who was the person that came up with that horrific slogan?
these abnormal and meaningless deaths
to be dead by the thundering sounds of whirling rotors of a helicopter hovering over a landing strip
the obsession throughout years and years of dread
is to die such a strange death on the battlefield
a death without bleeding
This wound underneath the branding on his chest
whenever uncovered, he would still be able to hear
The altered screaming sounds of his Allied fellow warriors
who had come to Viet Nam and
brought back into their own country?
bodily injuries and interminable nightmares
They would never go back to a normal life
their bodily forms still chockfull of war
just like jugs with water sloshing around that refuse to pour out
Underneath that wound he still can peel off dry scabs
like those comrades who chose to stay behind
they stolidly performed their duties
putting their hearts into them until themselves got discarded
They cared for the misfortunes of other people
without minding about their own misfortunes
what else more could be found under this wound of his
With each day he is losing a piece of dry scab
that he could not find again
and he already forgot
Just like those fallen and already forgotten soldiers
when the living does not remember the dead, the dead will die a second death
Yet there was a time
When returning from the realms of death
these poor soldiers
had to face the battlefield in the city
from the jungles they were brought back to the capital
To protect and appease the people screaming for war
but they were the same people who stayed out of the fight
and suddenly the soldiers turned into lonely beasts
utterly bewildered amid the battle field of Saigon
Alas many years have gone by
he had stayed behind
he got incarcerated
then he left
Pondering the fluctuations of life
He peels off the scabs over his wounds
and wonders: what else still remains?
Anything else there to give away?
Is this too late for going back just once?
tmt
11-11-2020
[ Translated from the Vietnamese by Đặng Vũ Vương ]
