SUMMONS TO THE SOULS IN THANG LONG-HANOI

SUMMONS TO THE SOULS IN THANG LONG-HANOI

Wuthering winds
Howling
Raging
Bearing down on writhing trees:
Are you sacred souls that in anger manifest yourselves?
For a long time now, you remain unappeased!

Sacred souls!
Are you unable to find liberation?
Are you suffering on behalf of the nation and the people?
’Cause man has made man suffer worse than natural calamities!

Today, then,
The Vietnamese both at home and abroad
light candles in their hearts
to set up an altar in downtown Thang Long
to commemorate a thousand years of high civilization
Asking that the manes of Ly Thai To(*)
Along with those of heroes and heroines
who have given their all to protect our land
to gather here and indict
those who dared import snakes to bite our domestic fowls
and contribute to tearing further the already ragged map...
O Nam Quan Pass! Ban Gioc Fall of resplendent name!
Where are now the traces of Phi Khanh and Nguyen Trai?
And those heroes whose names were imprinted deeply
in our minds for having defended Hoang Sa and Truong Sa!
How come these islands are now in enemy hands?

Independence, you say? Why then so much tribute to the neighbor to the North?
Freedom, say you? Why can’t people emit so much as a complaint?
Happiness, yes? Why is life still obsessed with hunger and cold,
conditions that don’t ever leave the common people?
They live now lost among those with devil’s heart
Who build castles on cemeteries full of bones
As hotels and entertainment palaces of magnificent splendor
are erected on grounds filled with sweat and tears
of the impoverished farmers who had to save every penny...

Hold it,
Sacred souls!
Please hold down your anger!
And look on silently...
Small children eking a living on street curbs
Old wrinkled women from early dawn
scavenging trash dumps, sewers, and canals... for scraps
through the bitter cold of winter
or the burning sun of summer...
Look, the streets are filled with victims of land injustice as they cry:
“O Party!
“O Government!
“O Mr. Prime Minister!
“Please save us!”
The yelling stops... with no breath left...
But
Those sitting up there are unconscionable, deprived of sentiments or emotions
Those Red Capitalists and new Local Tyrants who just grow
by leaps and bounds, like a spreading oil spot.

O souls victims of injustice
From the “Sky-shaking Days and Earth-shattering Nights”(**)
Come and see for yourselves
History is being overturned!
The new landlords
now go after the property of Buddhist temples and Catholic churches, of common people
in broad daylight
With the government turning its eyes away while helping itself to it.

O victims of so much crime across the land!
O those who died unjustly at Tet 1968 in Hue!
Boat people, land people... who left their cadavers and dry bones
Or those who were wrongfully put in so-called re-education camps
Whose blood and tears fill the history pages!

Sacred Souls
Of Heroes and Heroines!
The descendants of Lac Hong
who fearlessly demanded Freedom and Democracy
those who are being repressed, jailed, exiled, have their mouths shut, or forced to suicide,
Is there a time in history
where our country has seen so much paradoxes and ironies
where manifestations against foreign aggression are cruelly repressed?

O Sacred Soul of the Land!
O Hung Vuong, our Founder King!
How shameful it is to swallow these terrible deeds!
Please come home and help your children
in their determination to save the land from its horrible fate
Let them wrest back the land we lost,
Wrest back the territories given away
Protect the whole sacred land
So that Vietnam could once again raise its head
And look at the world...
Of today!...

TRUONG ANH THUY

Translated by Nguyen Ngoc Bich
Arlington, March 13, 2010

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(*) The founder of the Ly Dynasty in Vietnam (1010-1225).
(**) Reference here is made to the Land Reform in North Vietnam (1953-56) , called “the sky-shaking and earth-shattering revolution,” which claimed 172,008 victims out of which 70 percent are said to be wrongly accused, maliciously denounced, tortured and killed.