A Vietnamese Poetry in English Translation Explicated - Do Leon

Do Leon

By Nguyen Duy 
Translated by Nguyen Do and Paul Hoover
Explicated by Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

In my childhood I went to Na Bridge to fish

pulled my grandmothers skirt going to the Binh Lam flea market

caught sparrows in the ears of Buddhist sculptures

and sometimes stole eye dragon fruit at the Tran pagoda



In my childhood I played in the Cay Thi temple

and barefoot in darkness to watch the Song temples ceremony

The odor of white lily mixed with aloe wood smoke was delicate

The sorceress shadow staggered in the van melody


I didnt realize how miserable my grand mother was

She groped for crabs and skimmed for shrimps at Dong Quan

She carried green tea leaves to sell at Ba Trai

Quan Chao and Dong Giao; her shadow tottered on cold nights.



I was solid crystal between the real and the unreal

my grandmother and fairies Buddhists and saints

These were starving years the dong boiled but not yet done

Why did its smell  seem like white lily and aloe wood perfume?


America bombed my grand mothers house blew away

Song temple exploded blowing down other temples and pagodas

Saints and Buddhists were committed to leaving together

My grand mother went to sell eggs at Ken train station


I had been in the armya long time and never returned to my grand mothers home

As one riverbank increases the other decreases

When I realised I loved her it was too late

My grandmother now lies in a grass covered grave

The speaker in this poem recollects his childhood. As a child he went to the Na Bridge to fish. He used to cling to his grandmother’s skirt and go to the flea market where second hand articles are bought and sold. He played in the temple premises. He went bare foot in the dark on an evening to watch the ceremony at the Song temple. There aloe wood and lily were burnt. The child enjoyed the incense. And may be mantras were chanted there. The melody of the mantras seemed to dispel every evil omen. The child could see a sorceress staggering as it were.

Now on hindsight the child who has now grown up into a man can realize how poor his grandmother was. She used to catch crabs and shrimps for her living.  She carried green tea leaves to sell at the market. Her shadow tottered on the cold nights.

Recollecting these vignettes of childhood the speaker says that he was a solid crystal as it were between the two world’s one of the fairies and another which was real. Both the worlds reflected on him but he could not full well understand their import. In course of time America bombed and the grandmother’s house was blown away. Temples and pagodas crumbled. The saints and their Buddhist followers were scattered. The grand mother went to sell eggs at a railway station. In the mean time the speaker joined the army and never returned to his grandmother’s home but childhood memories lingered. The poem closes with the two lines:

When I realized I loved her, it was too late

My grandmother now lies in grass covered grave.

The poem is loaded with a bunch of proper names such as Na Bridge, Tran Pagoda, Cay Thi temple, Song temple, Dong Quan, Quan Chao, Dong Gia and Len train station. There is a symphony of proper names. It creates a strange land in the mind’s eye of the reader who does not belong to Vietnam. The poet makes this strange world vivid by way of touching upon some particulars. We can visualize how incense was being burnt at Song temple’s ceremony and how eye dragon fruits abounded at the Tran temple. It was indeed an idyllic landscape littered with temples and pagodas. They were in the main Buddhist shrines. Lord Buddha himself stands for peace and love.

But a landscape littered with temples and pagodas is not enough. There must be human touch about them. The temple campuses were playgrounds for children. The speaker remembers how he sometimes stole eye dragon fruits there.

The little child who sauntered in the temple campuses also clung to the skirt of his grandmother and went to the flea market. He also went with his grandmother to catch fish.

Thus, the portrait of the grandmother becomes vivid before our eyes. She used to take her grandchild along with her while doing her daily economic activities.  In his innocence the little child did not understand that they were very poor.

But the peaceful landscape did not last for long. America bombed. The temples and pagodas were razed to the ground. This is not all. The shelter of the grandmother was also blown up. In the mean time the child grew into a man. As a man he joined the army to defend his motherland against the aggressors. He was then away from his grandmother. But he could now realize how poor his grandmother was.

It seems that the poem is a parody of  Wordsworth’s famous poem ‘The Daffodils’. In his poem The Daffodils, Wordsworth chanced upon a host of daffodils dancing along the margin of a lake. The poet says:

I gazed and gazed but little thought

what wealth the show had to me brought.

Later when the poet was lying in a pensive mood the daffodils flashed upon his inward eye which was the bliss of solitude.  But here the vignettes of childhood recurred in the grown up speaker’s mind and the speaker now realized how poor his grandmother was.

The poem could draw the attention of the feminists. The speaker unlike the rest of us does not dwell on his father or grandfather as the bread earner. Here is a narrative where a grandmother is a protagonist. True that, the grandmother had been very poor and she had to catch fish and go to the market to sell them. But Time did not let her remain in that state. She was flung from the frying pan to fire. Her house was shattered. She had to shift from her usual economic activities to sell eggs at a railway station.

Recollections are not always pleasant.  In his thoughtless childhood the speaker did not understand whether his grandmother was rich or poor. When he was grown up he understood that his grandmother was poor. Thereafter a period of starvation followed. In his thoughtless childhood the speaker could not understand whether he loved his grandmother or not. But the grown up speaker by way of recollecting his past found that he loved her.  But the grandmother is no longer there. She is now in the grave. Wonderful reticence speaks volumes here. Firstly let us be focused on the child. With a child the antinomies do not exist. He cannot distinguish poverty from riches. He cannot distinguish between love from hatred. He is all love. But this world of childhood is shattered with age. While a child is more enveloped by sensations, with age one is more occupied with perceptions. While a child is more at the receiving end, a grown-up constructs the past by decoding his experiences.

There are of course villains and evil forces that shatter this idyllic world of childhood. America bombed and the world was out of joints. But that was not all. The real antagonist is Time. The grandmother at the outset catching crabs and later selling eggs becomes a tragic figure fighting onslaughts of Time without yielding to it.

One wonders whether the grandmother is the symbol of the earlier days of Vietnam itself . Ravages of war destroyed her. The speaker as well has been continuing his battle for life. 

The poem also depicts a conflict between times past and times present. The poem has been a perfect pattern through its recurrences and variations. In the temple the little child saw in his imagination a sorceress staggering in the smoke. It was the evil. It was being driven away by the rituals in the temple. Ironically enough, the same smoke and the odour showed up with bombing that proves that the sorceress had not really died during the temple rituals. And one wonders whether the rituals and the temples are at all of any avail? And yet do we not long to get back the landscape loud with temple bells and mantras?

Thus the poem is itself as hard as crystal where numerous emotions mingle into a solid that baffles analysis.