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Poems of Old Hanoi



From a painting by Vietnamese artist Vien Thuc, at Gallery Cyclo

SPRING IN THE ROYAL CITY
NGUYEN GIAN THANH
Composed in 1508

The universe was created,
And the royal city was built.
Here gather mandarins in gorgeous dress,
Court music resound,
Culture and honour blossom.
The sky is filled with spring air, the whole universe gleams,
Like a solid pillar amidst the affluent nation stands the capital.

Since ancient times
We have been at the heart of the land.
At the summit of the country,
To the southwest Tan monutain raises its peak to the roar of wild beasts,
To the northeast, the dragon frolicks in the waters of the Red River.
For a thousand miles stretch the hills and waters making ours a key position.
The four seasons are as many springs, when each one's flowers shine in all their brightness.
Everywhere proud edifices
And wonderous spots,
Nine-walled palaces of jade
Brightened by thousands of brocade robes
Everywhere, markets among the houses, like an immense fresco.
No end of busy quarters, where purple jostles vermilion.

Inside cavernous austere palaces
Golden doors bar the way.
Weeping willows waft like clouds,
Peaches in royal gardens redden like the cheeks of pretty girls.
The sound of flutes springing from a palace makes the moonlight tremble,
The drums in watch-towers urge the flowers to open.
The markets are more and more animated,
The streets rival one another in beauty,
Young men tuck up their tunics and play shirtless shuttlecock,
Blushing lasses arrange their breast covers and trousers,
Noblemen on horseback admire flowers along the avenues,
Young people ride in carriages with open parasols displaying their nobility

What joy to be in an era of peace!
Tributes from every corner pour in,
The palace brightens up the spring
Men can now look forward to happy longevity,
From distant provinces carriages bring the people's homage
To a throne as unshakable as Thai Son mountain.
The nation, firmly installed on golden ground
Like the royal city, is blessed with abundance.
And indeed it is
A rich, wonderful royal city
Where spring shines in all its beauty
Can one dissociate spring colors from the splendor of the capital?

From the four points of the compass everything converges on the heart of the land.
Every corner is a capital in miniature
However, it is the city which makes the beautiful spring.
It is better to rely on human virtues than on advantages of terrain
Many a country has built their power on citadels,
Let us rather make justice and humanity our fortresses,
So that generation after generation, spring after spring, our children may hand down our fine traditions for ten thousand years.

From a painting by Vietnamese artist Hoang Ha Tung, at Gallery Cyclo

THE GUITAR PLAYER OF LONG THANH
NGUYEN DU
(1765-1820)

She was a beauty of Long Thanh
Whose name I don't remember
She was excellent at playing the guitar,
The whole town called her the guitar player.
In the palace of former king,
She had played the kings praise
One of the finest pieces ever heard in this world.
In my young day, on the shore of lake Giam
I remember seeing her on a festive evening.
In her early twenties, the prime of youth,
Dressed in pink, radiant like a peach flower,
Dreamy, candid and irresistibly charming.
The five tones danced in her fingers
Like the breeze caressing a pine wood,
Like limpid cries of birds in the night,
Like peals of thunders striking at Tien Phuc stele,
Or, at times, like Trang Tich humming tunes of his native soil.
Plunged in ecstasy, everyone listened
To these tunes once reserved for kings' palaces.
The Tay Son officers were there, enchanted
And carried away by the music through the night,
From all sides rewards poured down,
Money counted less than grass or dirt.
These men surpassed dukes and marquises by their haughty looks
And outshone the capital's gilded youth.
The thirty six tunes on her finger board
Were valued as they priceless jewel in Trang An.

Twenty six years have passed since then
The Tay Son defeated, to the south I went,
And have not seen Long Thanh and its festivities.
This time in my honor, a feast is given by the governor.
Among singers and musicians of extreme youth
Alone, at the end of the stage, sits a gray haired woman,
Her complexion pale, her features withered and her figure slender.
Carelessly dressed, with no make up on her face,
Who would think she had once been the toast of the town?
These new voices singing old tunes to my eyes bring tears,
My heart is rent at each sound which fills my ears.
I think of how it was twenty years before
When I saw her at Lake Giam shore.
The town, the ramparts and people have changed.
The sea is roaring where mulberries were verdant.
The Tay Son's work has disappeared,
Alone a musician remained.

Years have gone by like a dream,
My tunic is wet with tears when I think of bygone days
I have come back from the south, my hair all white
No wonder her beauty has withered.
With eyes wide opened, I dream of the olden time
Face to face, alas, we do not recognize each other.

Nguyen Du lived his younger years in Long Thanh, or Thang Long. With the defeat of the Tay Son rebels, and destruction of the Le temples by the Nguyen, Nguyen Du left Thang Long to serve the new regime in their new capital of Hue.

poems gifFrom a painting by Vietnamese artist Le Cuu, at Gallery Cyclo
HANOI: IMPRESSIONS
NGUYEN CONG TRU
(1778-1858)

Whether it is blossom time or not the jasmine is always jasmine
Elegant or not, one is nevertheless a citizen of the capital.
We look back and think, alas, was there that songs and dances resounded,
When this land was capital of the empire
When these hills, these waters were its sublime environment
For the dynasties to build up their empires under Viet Nam's skies.
In the hamlets here, folk display urban elegance.
The metropolis still has forests
And over the rolling plain resounds the buffalo herd's song.
In the water wafting fishermen's sails are mirrored.
The grass and flowers open and wither,
The hills and rivers smile at growth and decline:
Nature has witnessed many upheavels.
The pensive traveller wonders how many times
The stars in the sky have changed,
Where now are the royal palaces and imperial temples of yore?
The gibbon exults, the oriole warbles not without irony.

Nguyen Cong Tru was born in the village of Uy-vien, Nghi-xuan District, Ha-tinh Province. He failed several times and did not pass the regional examination to win the cu-nhan or master's degree until 1819. For the next 30 years he served King Minh Mang and then King Thieu Tri. During a caeer marked by many setbacks due to his independence, he was once degraded to the rank of a lowly soldier. But in his official functions he displayed a wide range of abilities, administrative and military. His proudest success was the reclamation of coastal lands in Nam-dinh and Ninh-binh, which led to the settlement of two districts: Tien-hai and Kim-son. His poetry reflects two oppositve faces of a rich personality: a heroic sense of duty and achievement and a hedonistic zest for life.

Biographical sketch from Huynh Sanh Thong's Heritage of Vietnamese Poetry


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