More Love
On With The Voyage
During the period I wrote love songs, I did not just talk about love and suffering but also about death. However, I still had in my mind the road I traced for myself in the early fifties. I couldn't yet give up love, but I could not give up my path either. In any case the recently written MỘT BÀN TAY (A Hand) was more about life than about love. Besides songs about Love, Suffering and Death, I wrote more spiritual songs.
Earlier LỮ HÀNH had been a proclamation: travelling through life,
through youth, through nature and the human world, through time, we must
always step quickly to keep ahead of the world. Now I wrote XUÂN
HÀNH (Spring Voyage), an answer to the eternal question: qui es tu? d'où
viens-tu? où vas-tu? My answer was: You came from a human heart and you
will go back to the human heart. You are man, god and demon all at once, with
a capacity for enduring love and enduring, passionate hatred. But in this
short life, you must catch life in every blinking of the eyes, must experience the
joy and sadness within each heartbeat.
SPRING VOYAGE
(Saigon-1959)
Who are you? Where did you come from?
Tell me, where are you going?
What made you bloom thus
Soon only to scatter with the dry leaves?
What are you, a gust of wind,
A grain of white sand, a blue speck of dust?
Did you come back to the old port in the old days?
Are you travelling from nothingness to nothingness?
I came from man's heart, with a smile and a tear
With enduring love, enduring hate, full of passion
Yesterday I was a man
Tonight I am a god -- or perhaps a lonely ghost
In the blinking of an eye I catch the whole world and swallow
For thousands of years I may rejoice with half a song
I listen to the pulses and pauses of my heart
A thousand years' pain may pass between two beats
You are I, in the morning light of spring
Walking through life carring a new love
You are I, forever travelling on the path of human love
When spring ends, I will come back into YOUR heart.
FEET
(Saigon-1961)
Feet walking on arid fields
Under the burning sun of summer
Breaking the soil, watering the weeds with blood
Unwavering in spite of thorns and prickles
To the dried up sea and the deep jungle they walk
Continually breaking new grounds.
They wade in the mud
In the bitter cold water of winter
Among the emaciated riceplants that warm the heart
They walk this afternoon, never having a rest
Building the future
Stepping for thousands of miles
On and on they walk, feet of heroes
On the uncertain road, they walk forever.
Feet walking on the battlefield
Stepping on bones and blood
But wishing for flowers to bloom on the ground
For freedom they walk, as long as sufferings fill the world
They walk to break prisons
They walk in peace
Carrying words of love in the green wind
All-knowing, they join the worlds of life and death
They step gently on the familiar road
Past the river of Dream on to the grove of Forgetfulness.
Feet walking towards the heavenly path
Stepping for thousands of miles
On they walk, feet of heroes
On the uncertain road, they walk forever
THE SONG OF SPRING
(Saigon-1961)
My spring came to life a happy night
The night when the conjugal bedroom welcomed my parents
A dormant spring, dimly glowing in a dream
Awoke suddenly and from father like a ray of sunlight came to mother
Spring! O spring! O spring!
In spring I came, adding my passionate cries
Pretty spring, fresh spring, gentle dreams of old,
Blue spring, floating in the rain and the sun
Spring garden full of flowers singing all day about spring
Spring! O spring! O spring!
Spring brings me to the land of love
Spring love, sometimes full of joy sometimes full of sadness
Spring of love swells with the sap of life
When I find you spring comes like a storm into my heart
Spring! O spring! O spring!
Spring rises to the top and looks down on the abyss
The sacred soul of spring rises eternal
Spring has come to me thousands of times
No matter the sorrows and angry spells
Spring! O spring! O spring!
O my spring! My desire is still strong
Even though I'll have to die like everybody else
Eternal spring, as long as I live there will be spring,
O spring, let your lover live a few more lives!
Spring! O spring! O spring!
Thương em từ thuở mẹ về với cha...
I have loved you since mother came to father...
The ancient Viets put all of time and space in a six-eight love couplet. Boundless love indeed, from someone that looks at the stars and loves a person from the days she did not yet exist. I added to the rhyme to write BÀI CA SAO (Stars Song), which expressed my feeling for the then object of my love. This song had the sound of a folk song.
SONG ABOUT STARS
(Saigon-1961)
Nine crown stars close by
I have loved you since mother came to father
Six king stars far away
I have loved you since people walked in and out
Six dream stars all around
Where is the Khuê star?
Nine Khuê stars stringed out
I have loved you since love existed
Five mang stars lying across
I have loved you since mother bore me
Five Vuon stars in a circle
Four Tu stars in a square
Two paired stars on each other
I have loved you since mother carried me in her arms
Three stars revolving
I have loved you since I saw your smile
A shooting start came into my life
A falling star came down into my heart
A shooting star falls off the sky
I have loved you since mother sat and dreamed
A falling star falls into the garden
I have loved you since he came to her
The evening star twinkles over the village
The morning star sparkles over the hamlet
The evening star twinkles over the street
I still love you since you went to somebody else
The morning star sparkles over the tree
I still love you since you left for him
The Van star is far far away
The Quanh star shines high above the ocean
The Van stars glow dimly
I still love you still since we parted
The Quanh star followed the one who left
Loving you I can only look at the night sky
O stars, why all this sadness?
O stars, why...
... all this sadness?
SONG OF THE MOON
(Saigon-1961)
O Moon! Slender leaf of the evening
Hanging in the sky
Out there in the empty fields
O moon, your love is still young
The wind carries you away
The wind carries you away
O Moon! Blue moon
Shining in the lemon garden
And in the peach orchard
So bright in the night
O moon, so passionate in love
Awake all night in the soft bed
Awake all night in the soft bed
O moon, moon in the night
Late visitor in the night
The pillow has grown cold, so cold
He is gone, is gone
O moon, old love is so quiet
As you disappear in the night
Love Continues
From 1956 to 1962, although I continued to write love songs, both my time and my heart
were not up to the task of expressing all the joys and
sufferings of love. I had therefore to borrow other people's words by putting to music many
immortal love poems, at first those of Lưu Trọng Lư such as HOA RỤNG
VEN SÔNG (Flowers Falling by the River), VẦN THƠ SẦU RỤNG
(Sad Stanzas Falling), THÚ ÐAU THƯƠNG (The Joy of Suffering), Huy
Cận's NGẬM NGÙI (Melancholy), Xuân Diệu's CHIỀU (Evening), Hàn Mặc
Tử's TÌNH QUÊ (Country Love), Bích Khê's TỲ BÀ (Lute), Ðỗ Qúy
Toàn's MUÀ XUÂN YÊU EM (Loving You In The Spring), Cung Trầm Tưởng's
MÙA THU PARIS (Autumn in Paris), TIỄN EM (Saying Goodbye),
CHIỀU ÐÔNG (Winter Evening), later those of Phạm Thiên Thư such as
NGÀY XƯA HOÀNG THỊ (Hoàng Thị Once Upon A Time), EM LỄ CHÙA
NÀY (Come To Worship In This Pagoda), and Phạm Văn Bình's CHUYỆN TÌNH
BUỒN (Sad Love)...
Apart from former love songs as Looking For Each Other, On Each Other's Shoulder,
Love In Another Life, Don't Leave, etc... I also wrote a few other
songs before being finally separated from my love. The first was
CHO NHAU. In this song I wanted to give all I had to my love, but
for one thing: freedom.
TO GIVE
(Saigon-1957)
We give with no regret
We give long long ago
We give since our first day
We give all the years passing
Since the days of our youth
We give without a thought
We give without counting
We give the first minute of love
We give our love's suffering
We give strands of hair
We give God given sight
We give tears and banter
We give our cradle, our grave
But let's keep our freedom
We give our well used pen
We give our guitar with broken strings
We give our end of season poems
We give our dream of old age
We give a muse's beauty
We give a lover's luck
We give hate and jealousy
And we give money too
We give our place in the underworld
And our life in paradise
We give the Trường Sơn range
And the four oceans
We give our homeland
But when we must part
Let's cut out ties with no regret!
THE DAY YOU TURN TWENTY
(Saigon-1961)
The day you turn twenty
Cut your long hair
Say goodbye to happiness
And hello to sadness
The day you turn twenty
Not knowing what longing is
Eyes filled with love
Lips breaking in a smile
Gone already is youth
When throughout the night
You listened to your heart's dreams
When the lingering moon
Sang a lullaby in your gentle dream
When flowers bloomed on your virgin lips
This morning a flock of bird
Comes to commiserate
With the faded flowers
Listen! Outside the wind wails
Incessant rain will come
Fairy tales will be gone
The day you turn twenty
Try to hold back the world
So that the last word lasts forever
And time itself comes to a halt
The day you turn twenty
Hardly have you known love
But have already tasted its bitterness
But it will soon fade...
I AM DREAMING A LONG LONG DREAM
(Saigon-1967)
I am dreaming a long long dream
Please do not disturb, o world
I see the greenness
From the branches flowing all over me
I see the rosy color
From all paths into my soul gently seeping
From the cool dawn
To the flagrant dusk
A breeze is filling my heart
With the sweet smell of space
I hear the joy of the world
Rising through the night to reach the stars
I hear voices from people's hearts
Tenderly asking for warmth
And I see in my heart
Love, blooming into exquisite nestlings
O world, please do not disturb
Let me dream on, for I am still young!
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