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THE PURPLE OF MYRTLE FLOWERS

MẦU TÍM HOA SIM





















MẦU TÍM HOA SIM

THE PURPLE OF MYRTLE FLOWERS
(Tomentos Rose)

Recently, it's become a big event when the poet Huu Loan at his 90 suddenly received an amount of 100 millions vnd from Electronic Company Vitek VTB for the copyright of his well known poem 'The Purple of Myrtle'. That is the highest price for a VN poem that ever sold so far.
The poet Huu Loan has his full name Nguyen Huu Loan, borned 1916. His hometown, also the place where he's been living so far is Nga Son district, Thanh Hoa province in North VN. He joined Viet Minh Army (Communist Army led by Vo Nguyen Giap) before the age of the Autumn revolution (1945, when the Viet Minh took over the administration of the North Vietnam from the invaders Japanese). Not much he wrote, but many of poems which expressed the heart-feeling of human under the revolution war such as The purple of myrtle, the Ca Pass, The hamlets I came... were remembered by heart by many generations of reader.
The poem Purple of Myrtle was written since over half a century ago, that expressed the immediate feeling at an impressive incident that happened to his life. In the war time, he married a young pretty wife who was one of his former school pupils. The couple merely spent two weeks together before he was to be back his operating unit. Three months later, the soldier husband received a bad news from home that his wife was drawn from a flood, at the age of 16.



She has 3 older brothers, who were in the army.
Among her youngers,
There still one was under age of talk,
While hers was of too young (while she was just a girl of greenish hair).

I was an army man (guerilla, national guard)
Who was then away from home,
Loving her the love
like the one brothers used to give their little sisters.

For the wedding day,
she didn't ask for the new dress.
I had the army uniforms
and boots with muddy stain of combat trails.
She gave nice smiles
beside the unique groom,
Who'd just been back from the unit (army camp, LZ)
where I'd soon return after the wedding.

From a remoted combat zone
I thought of her pitifully,
of a young girl who got merried in the war time,
when her husband might not be able to return.
What would she be then If I could not be back
How pity my wife would be waiting,
so little and lonesome in a vast empty countryside.

But it was not deathtoll
to the man on fight.
Instead,
to the little girl behind the front line.

When I was back home
It was not her to meet
Instead
I saw my mom sitting by her daughter-in-law's tomb in the darkness.
The vase for the wedding flowers
Was there as the bowl for perfume-sticks
Scattered around with its own cold ashes

Her hair looked so blue
and too short for a knot
At the last time for us, oh dear
We were unable to hearing from each other
nor a seeing to each other

In the old days, she loved the purple color of the myrtle flowers
Her dresses used to be purple like myrtle flowers
The old days
lonely under the light of midnight lamp
sitting by her own little shadow
She used to mend the torn cloths for her husband
In the old days...

Just before sunset, in a rainy jungle
The three brothers at the Northeast combat zone
Heard the news of that their sister had gone
Then came the message of her wedding
Through the river, that's wavy under the backing wind of early Autumn.
The growing up youngest one
Looked doubtfully at the sister's picture
As the returning early Autumn wind
withered to yellow the grasses around the tomb background.

Operating troops moving in late afternoon (just before sunset)
Through (across) hills of myrtle flowers.
Hills after hills of myrtle flowers
The hills of myrtle flowers stretched through the endless beam of sunset
The purple color of myrtle flowers
purplized the evergone of the deserted day-end

There was someone singing the folk-song of the old days
"The trimming egde threads on my shirts had broken
still I haven't got a housewife, while my Mom is too busy to mend it for me"
The song was sang unintentionally or aiming an ill-joke on me?
Only the deserted sunset knew why it was purplized (made into purple color)
The deserted sunset purplized has added more purple to the gnawing color.

Glanded over the torn shoulder cloths on my shirt
I sang in the color of flowers
"The trimming egde threads on my shirts had broken
So soon my housewife had gone away, while my Mom is too old to mend it for me"

The purple color of myrtle flowers purplized a tearful love time of mine
Oh dear, purplized my love with tears
Beams of the sunset illuminated a ghost yellow of jack-o-lantern and buffalo horn bugles sounded the rythms of marching bands.
Echoed and flickered after the moving shadows of the corps of troops
Endlessly and without hope of return moving into bottomless deep glooms of the purple

Where would I send for my hope
Where would I search for my hope
Oh my dear housewife, the threads to mend my shirts had long been broken.


HỮU LOAN


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