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[LIT] Untitled (in memoriam)
Today a mentor/friend of mine shared with me the sad news
of the passing away of his long-standing friend/companion
after a long struggle with AIDS. Private sympathies and
condoleances aside, I'd like to take this ocasion to share
with him and you all (esp. the poetry-lovers among us) a
posthumous poem from a favorite poet of mine ... well, at
least a translation of it that I did last year. Though the
poem is "untitled", it's really a personal reflection and
acceptance of the self and its finitude -- suitable to a
man facing the proespect of death toward the end of his
life -- but someone as I translated it, the poem seems to
speak to me most eloquently about a kind of self-acceptance
of one's personhood and destiny of one's self, the kind of
self-acceptance that tellingly resonnates (at least in my
mind) with the "conditions humaines" of stoic gay people
who must/can accept themselves and their "souffrances"
in life with dignity: be it a gay identity, old age,
death, or even AIDS ... that's how the poem has spoken
to me, and I'd like to share it with you in this moment
of reflective sympathy.
Kho^ng DDe^`
To^i nha^.n ca'i na`y dda~ tu+` la^u.
Ba^y gio+` no' to+'i, da^~u ho+i mau,
dda~ kho^ng tra'nh kho?i thi` to^i tie^'p
mo^.t ca'ch ddau thu+o+ng nhu+ng nga^?ng dda^`u.
Ai co' thi'ch gi` ddi ma~i ma~i
vo^ trong ca'i co~i cha(?ng mo^ te^#.
Mo^.t khi ca^.p be^'n va`o vo^ ta^.n
thi` dde^'n vo^ bie^n cha(?ng tro+? ve^`.
Tuy va^.y, to^i dda~ so^'ng he^'t mi`nh,
suo^'t ddo+`i kho^ng mo^.t phu't coi khinh.
To^i coi tro.ng nha^'t khi la`m vie^.c,
ho.a co' thua khi so^'ng vo+'i ti`nh.
Ca'i qua? cam na`y dda` va('t he^'t
hie^'n cho non nu+o+'c, hie^'n ddo+`i tha^n.
Tuy kho^ng bie^'t dde^'n bao gio+` kie^.t,
nhu+ng da^~u sao thi` cu~ng pha?i du+`ng.
Xin ha~y cho to^i ddu+o+.c gia~ tu+` ...
va^~y cha`o co~i thu+.c dde^? va`o hu+#.
Trong ho+i tho+? cuo^'i da^.ng tro+`i dda^'t
cu~ng va^~n si ti`nh dde^'n nga^'t ngu+ ...
-- Xua^n Die^.u (Di Ca?o)
Untitled
This I have accepted for a long time.
Now that it's coming, though rather fast,
and that it can't be avoided, then I'll greet it
with pain and sorrow but also an uplift head.
Who would want to go forever
into that realm of neither this nor that.
Once you drift into the harbor of infinity
then you will never return from its boundlessness.
Nonetheless, I have lived to the fullest,
all my life never was there a slighted moment.
I hold most valuable the time given to work,
well, perhaps just a bit short of that given to love.
This orange has been all but squeezed up,
its life a sacrifice offered to hills and streams.
Though one knows not when it will ever run dry,
the time will come, after all, when it just has to stop.
Please let me have a chance to say farewell --
waving adieu to the world of reality to enter emptiness.
In my last breath dedicated to heaven and earth,
full of love's yearning I will still be drunk dizzy!
-- Xuan Dieu (posthumous) trans. Nguyen Quoc Vinh
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