(In Exile)
Through the cold snow walk the refugees
Look closely at the prints each leaves
The deep foot prints holds the misery
Of the man from a warm country.
(from FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW - translation by Mary Nguyen)
The poet Vũ Hoàng Chương once wrote: We have lost everything but each other... This thought was in the mind of the majority of refugees. But I believed that as long as we have each other, we haven't lost anything:
WE HAVE ONLY EACH OTHER
(Midway City, CALIFORNIA-1978)
We have lost everything but each other
We only have pain and anger
A sadness as wide as the sea
We have lost even our dreams
We have only a shadow of the past
A hazy past
Sad as a leaf falling in autumn.
Come here, let's hug each other
Hand holding the present
Frail fingers looking for a way
Long fingers caressing the future
Shoulder to shoulder, don't refuse this kiss
Let close this wound in our heart
Together let's build a new love
The world will be less empty
We haven't lost everything, for we still have each other
We still need to desire, still need to love
We must keep our first love,
Today's love, and tomorrow's
We build tomorrow's past
With love however shortlived
Listen to the song
Our love is the sun rising over the sea...
CODA
We haven't lost everything, for we still have each other
Let's take refuge in our love.
Then, in 1983, I received a letter from a music lover in Saigon who asked the
following question, based on an old song of mine:
Shall we lose each other in ten years?
IN A THOUSAND YEARS WE SHALL NOT FORGET
(Midway City, CALIFORNIA-1983)
Like a little stream
Love has gone
Gone many years
Gone many miles
Alas! A love so poetic
Is now but an echo
Five years we haven't met
In ten years shall we lose each other?
Shall we lose each other?
Time is a tear withering
On a love without name
Far, far away
Do you still remember me
How can I forget
Your eyes, your smile
Those magic dreams we had
I thank you my love
We must thank life's gift
Like tiny drops of blood
Coming back to the arid heart
The ever branching river of life
Always ends in the land of impermanence
To the wide ocean we go
To find an old love
Five years we haven't met
In ten years we won't forget
We won't forget.
CODA
A hundred years we may not meet
In a thousand years we shan't forget
We'll still remember...
Following my usual practice of building on old songs, I pictured the young woman of TRẢ LẠI EM YÊU (I Give Back To You). If she was still alive, here's how her life would be like:
NOW MY LOVE
(Midway City, CALIFORNIA-1983)
Now my love you live alone
In our suffering country
Now you live an uncertain life
Struggling, hungry, year in year out
Storms rage over your frail shoulders
Smiles have deserted your dry lips
My love! O my love!
You were so soft then
Now you are exhausted
Your hair is entangled
Under the rain and the sun
Long dresses no longer grace the streets you walk
O my suffering love
You are like our country of myths
Our beautiful country
Now struggling under torture
I live a life of exile
In a cold uncaring land
Life a constant bewildering maelstrom
Wine only brings a bitter taste
Tears and laughter
Only keep old wounds bleeding
I must go back and take revenge
Then we shal live together, my love !
A SINGING CRICKET
(Midway City, CALIFORNIA-1983)
I want to rise above the layers of clouds
I want to follow the boat into the deep abyss
I want to follow you to the land of eternal sorrow
I must become an itinerant singing cricket (1)
The cricket has followed a wandering cloud
Leaving the world he finds oblivion in a fairy garden
But sometimes when clouds come to the mountain
Like a sad painting of life at the end of the road
The cricket starts singing over the clouds
His song reaches the prisoner behind the bars
Rain falls to wash away the sufferings
And the broken loves
O clouds floating
REFRAIN
The cricket has travelled the four seas
Crossed the oceans, moored his boat at many ports
Storms shook the sea
The ocean swallowed the boat
Into the abyss it sank
The cricket wanted to visit sirens
But he met a floating graveyard
In the deep mystic sea
Creatures departed eons ago
REFRAIN
The cricket sings in autumn
Calling for his lover! Calling for his lover!
But Love is long gone
Where have you gone? Where have you gone?
I am still here! I travel to the future
With the sound of music
I will sing for the world, for eternity
For love in the whole wide world
Go into the dreams my love
I stay to write songs
For unknown lovers...
REFRAIN
(1) The poet Trụ Vũ wrote this quatrain to me after I completed BÉ BẮT DẾ in 1972.
In my sentimental songs of that time I wanted to talk about
the influence of nature on my refugee's soul. As long as they remained
in Vietnam, Vietnamese artists express their feeling of nature with
bamboo groves and straw smoke. These are gentle, sweet and intimate
sights they grew up with. Now that we had left our little homeland
and crossed oceans and continents to arrive at our temporary abode,
nature seemed to dominate us, crush us, and we were left with feelings
of bottomless oceans, lonely mountains, cold western cities. These feelings
are expressed in:
LIKE MY HEART
(Midway City, CALIFORNIA-1983)
Translation by Mary Nguyen
This afternoon, I go to the seaside,
The sea is dark, desolate,
Colored with violet sadness.
The sea is plenty of rememberings;
The sea is trembling, the waves are perplexed
And come to die on the lonely sand.
The sun dies too, down into the ocean.
How painful is the sea !
Like an orphan, the sea continues to suffer;
The sea cries with the wind
Then angryly, become a storm;
The sea is as painful as my heart.
Let fill up the sea
So I don't have this ocean of sadness.
Let me be reborn as a brook
Becoming a small river
In my clean countryside,
So I can flow around the ricefields.
This morning, I climb to the snowy mountain
I lay down at the frosty sunmmit,
Look at the chain of riffs.
The trees have died of cold.
The sky is low and has no clouds,
The lake is as icy as my heart.
Then I go down to the city where no one knows me
The building of cement
Is so high that it hides the face of my lover.
The streets are crowded, but silent.
The days pass by like the shadows
Life is as empty as my heart.
Let brush the snow from the mountain
So the stone is not freezing.
Let meet people in the lonely streets
Let embrace each other, talking to each other,
Let love to be reborn
Let see the happiness at the end of the road.
Blue sea, verdant mountains or joyfull streets
Will be as happy as my heart...
FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW
(Midway City, California-1979)
Translation by Mary Nguyen
Through the cold snow walk the refugees
Look closely at the prints each leaves
The deep foot prints holds the misery
Of the man from a warm country.
The dainty prints of a Viet mother
Is more sad than any other
All the pain of sons and husbands lost
Is held within those tracks through the frost.
Even prints of lovers together
Or children enjoying cold weather
Cannot hide the haunted, sad exile
Of those whose land is lost and defiled.
When the warm sun shines and melts the snow.
The green grass on our path will grow.
Then every foot print will melt away
But the sadness from those prints will stay.
My heart's filled with footprints in the snow.
HUMANITY AND LOVE
(Midway City, CALIFORNIA-1978)
God gives you a life superior to animals
You are men with a destiny
God gives you heart and mind
Gives you a soul, you know how to laugh and to cry
But our Mother gives you more than that
She gives you love, not too much, not too little
Joy or sadness you have them both
You love mankind, you love the earthworm too
Humanity and Love !
Let us share food and clothing.
Humanity and Love !
Avoid the blood, the killing.
Call all humankind to save our race
Our peole are crying : Liberty
Call all humankind to save our race
Our people want to live peacefully under the sun.
Buddha gives you a lotus-like hand
To relieve the suffering of the world.
Your tears fall down to the far horizon
When you see this desolate life
But our mother gave you two brillant eyes
So you can see clearly our destroyed country
Mother sings you a fighting song.
You will fight for the happiness of our people
You pray to Jesus
To give you Love and Charity
Love blooms on the cross,
Jesus died for humankind.
And our Mother prays so the new rulers of Viet Nam
Will see their faults and will repent.
Bend your head, Mother teaches you Modesty
So our people can go out from misery
Life gives us two hands made of stone,
Our legs step all over the world
If we don't take by force the bounty of nature,
If we share between us these common things, we will have peace
Our mother gives us a thousand years of history,
Our country has seen many dangers
But together we take our hands
And Viet Nam overcame those dangers.
SONG FOR THOSE WHO STAY
(Midway City, CALIFORNIA-1978)
Translation by Mary Nguyen
I want to sing for friends in our country
With love and unbounded pity
I sing for our relatives
Who are becoming the starving-marching-ghosts.
I sing for friends
Imprisoned in the deep forests.
I sing for those in the grave,
Victims of an inhuman regime
I want to sing for friends in our country,
If you are still alive, keep your hatred.
I sing for those, arms in hand,
Fighting underground in the resistance
I want to sing for villagers
For city dwellers.
Fellowmen ! Let fight
Until our victory
I want to sing for our countrymen,
We shall be back.
Hand in hands, we'll rebuild our country,
Rebuild our beloved and peaceful Viet Nam.
I want to sing for my lover who suffers,
For my mother, my brothers in pain,
Sing for our life, for the fighting
For an eternal Viet Nam.
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