Nhà thơ Thanh Thảo
Thanh Thao, real name is Ho Thanh Cong, was born in 1946 in Mo Duc district, Quang Ngai province. Graduating from the Faculty of Literature, Hanoi University, he worked in the Southern battlefield and stayed in the homeland since then. In addition to poems, Thanh Thao writes newspapers and critical essays, however, his important contributions are expressed in poetry. He was awarded the State Prize for Literature and Art and the Award of Vietnamese Writers’ Association.
Seventh section
We are not tired
But grass are too sharp and warm!
At the age of twenty, my brother is stunned by a thin bird wing like
drawing lines
Many changes are like flying cloud
When we lie, it is still there
Silently keeping a “co may” stem
Footprints are moved back
Footprints are left in our life with the youngest years
At the age of eighteen, twenty, our beauty is sharp like grass
Thick like grass
Soft and strong like grass
Foggy strange wind in one afternoon
Flowers are silently formed in soil
The spring will wake up there
More than a sudden thing
We went into battle without regretting our own life
( No regrets for the age of twenty is an impossible thing )
But all are regretful about it, how will our nation be?
Grass is sharp but too warm, isn’t it?...
(Quoted from the poem: People going to the sea , 1977)
Greetings to my country
Sometimes my heart is empty when leaving
because of meeting a dreg in the office
I send greetings to my country. So sad
Country silently goes with me on the ways
Happiness sometimes comes along with friends’love
Eyes become bright
I send greetings to my country. Going through unfavorable
weather condition
We are familiar with hardship on two our shoulders all year round
Sometimes I put hand into pocket to take money but I only see the poem
Poem tells about future and I need to go to market at noon
I send greeting to my country. At such noon
Country and I have the same vegetarian meal
We live by running around and daily struggles
Sometimes the greetings to the country are forgotten
It is our mother who has no complaint to us
Although we still know that the greetings are above feasts
But more than greetings, our mother hopes that
Children do not her ashamed
Do not talk hot air
Country is not a derelict house
Sometimes inclining the head below the tree row
There are little eucalyptus shapes in the old days
I send greetings to my country. It seems
I slowly grow but I am older than tree row
Sometimes I lie with face up to see clouds
Clouds peacefully fly for thousands of years
I send greetings to my country. In silence
I hear the soft grass growing through the back
As if someone is pushing me to wake up
Surprisingly, I only see green color
I send greetings to my country. It seems
Green grass is touching my back.
Footprints are left on the grass
I walk past the elephant grass on an evening
Lifting up my eyes to the sparkling sky
Winds titles among blue background
Sounds from blackbird become immense
Trails are like stretched threads
Numberless footprints are sharply sticked there
No-one reads footprints
Thereby, no-one knows you go in near or far distance.
Life endlessly extends to our eyes
Small trail also leads to the battlefield
Persons suffering in malaria
Will footprints placed on greasy road be blurred?…
What is included in baby carriage?
To go to the ends of the earth
To bring many human desire
Little footprints make no word and no name
Time passes as if grass emerges
Trails are like the acrossing durable threads
Some go near, some go far
Only footprints are kept
Kept in the time grass
Silently stretching too far from our eyesight
Warmth is deeply left
For next generations to go to the battlefield.
Translated by Thanh Kha group
Source: Vietnam writers and works
VNQD