** Xuan Huong English Translations by Michael R. Burch

** Xuan Huong (1772-1882) was a risqué Vietnamese poetess. Her verse, replete with nods, winks, ****** innuendo and a rich eroticism, was shocking to many readers of her day and will probably remain so to some of ours. Huong has been described as "the candid voice of a liberal female in a male-dominated society." Her output has been called "coy, often ***** lyrics." I would add "suggestive to graphic." More information about this provocative poet follows these modern English translations of her poems.

Ốc Nhồi  ("The Snail")
by ** Xuan Huong
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My parents produced a snail,
Night and day it slithers through slimy grass.
If you love me, remove my shell,
But please don't jiggle my little hole!

The Breadfruit or Jackfruit
by ** Xuan Huong
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My body's like a breadfruit ripening on a tree:
My skin coarse, my pulp thick.
My lord, if you want me, pierce me with your stick,
But please don't squeeze or the sap will sully your fingers!

Bánh trôi nước ("Floating Sweet Dumpling")
by ** Xuan Huong
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My powdered body is white and round.
Now I bob. Now I sink.
The hand that kneads me may be rough,
But my heart at the center remains untouched.

The Cake That Drifts In Water
by ** Xuan Huong
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I was born virginal and beautiful,
Yet my life's been full of struggles.
My fate rests entirely in the hands of the elites.
Yet still I shall keep my heart pure.

Ode to a Paper Fan
by ** Xuan Huong
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

One ring receptive enough for any rod,
Coyly alluring since ancient times…
Your employment is to cool down sweating heroes,
To cover gentlemen’s heads whenever it rains.
Behind the bed-curtain, let’s tenderly ask him:
Panting like a dog in heat, are you satisfied?

***** You!
by ** Xuan Huong
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

***** the rule that makes you share a man!
You slave like maids but without pay.

Unplanned Pregnancy
by ** Xuan Huong
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My yielding resulted in this chaos;
Who can understand my anguish? …
However, this love-load I’ll soon be lugging,
Despite the world’s condemnation
(To have child, without a husband)
Is a an exceptional feat!

The Unfortunate Plight of Women
by ** Xuan Huong
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hey sisters, do you know?
The baby bawls at your breast
While your husband slides onto your stomach.
Both demanding your attention,
Both endlessly tugging.
All must be put in order.
“Hurry up with the flowers!”
Such are the demands of husbands and children.
Hey sisters, do you know?

Questions for the Moon
by ** Xuan Huong
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How many eons have you been there,
Endlessly transposing from slender to pregnant? …
Why do you orbit, aloof, the loneliness of night,
yet blush — so pale! — when seen by the sun?
Awake, long past midnight, whom do you seek?
Why so enchanted with hills, rivers and dales?

At the Chinese General's Tomb
by ** Xuan Huong
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I see it there — looming, alone —
the General's tomb, so impressive!
But if I could be reborn, become a man,
with such advantages, couldn't I do better?

Advice to a Lamenting Widow
by ** Xuan Huong
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Why are you wailing, boo-hoo-ing, mourning a man?
Can it sister! Desist! Don't shame yourself!
O my ear sister, I should have warned you:
Don't eat meat, if it makes you ***** blood!

Wasps
by ** Xuan Huong
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Where and why are you wandering, foolish wasps?
Come, your big sister will teach you to compose!
Silly baby wasps suckle from rotting stamens;
***** ewes **** fences when there’s freedom in the gaps.

Lament for Hô Xuân Huong
by Nguyen Emperor Thieu Tri's brother
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Here the lake overflows with lotuses;
Allow the flower girls to gather some,
While not trampling Hô Xuân Huong's grave!
For in the Golden Springs beyond,
She still anguishes over lost love.
Her lipstick desiccate, her rouge faded, her tomb unattended,
Xuân Huong is gone…

Most of Huong's poems were written in Nôm script, a complex Vietnamese adaptation of Chinese characters employed from the 15th to 19th centuries. Through her Nôm poems, Huong helped elevate the status of Vietnamese poetry. A century later, she was called "the Queen of Nôm poetry" by Xuan Dieu, one of Vietnam’s greatest poets.

Huong was more than a mere penner of ****** verse; she was an "outspoken proto-feminist: an irreverent wild card bringing a new voice to Vietnamese poetry while marking out a bolder trail for what it means to be a woman."

"** Xuan Huong is an improbable figure in Vietnamese literature. Vietnamese historians are virtually unanimous in acclaiming her as the 'most special ' poetry writer who ever lived in Vietnam. … She wrote poetry which, for all its playfulness, may have been the darkest assault upon Confucian ethics ever delivered by a literate scholar of a classical East Asian society. Most modern Vietnamese writers agree that she often went too far, to the point where her contemporaries regarded her as a 'monster ' whose influence should be obliterated. — Alexander Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model

Confucian ethics decreed that a female should obey: first her father, then her husband, then her son after her husband’s death.

Huong was apparently born in the Quynh Luu district of the north-central province of Nghe An. Xuan Huong means "Spring Fragrance," "Spring Essence," or "Scent of Springtime." Her father, a scholar named ** Phi Dien, died young. Her mother remarried, as a concubine. Huong grew up near Thang Long (modern Ha Noi), in a male-dominated society in which polygamy was permitted and men were more privileged than women. Huong may or may not have been a concubine herself. Very little is known with any certainty about her life.

In 1962, Nguyễn Đức Bính admitted, "I don't know anything about the poetess Hồ Xuân Hương and other people don't know any more than I do." And yet legends do take on lives of their own!

Keywords/Tags: ** Xuan Huong, Vietnamese, English translations, snail, grass, shell, hole, breadfruit, jackfruit, tree, skin, hands, sap, stain, dumpling, body, powder, powdered, sink, bob, swim, pond, heart, center, red, nom script, spring fragrance, spring essence, concubine

The border to me
XUAN CARLOS ESPINOZA-CUELLAR·WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2015
  
The border to me is a constant anguish,
A big pause button,
Often in dreams I dream of Mexico as my lover
And he waits for me,
And waits.
The border to me is my grandma’s rosary,
She said she’d hold on until I could go back,
Until she couldn’t.
I recently found out that for years she’d scold my cousins for using my table games “he’s coming back, and he’ll ask for them…”
And she’d save t hem in her old, rusty closet.
The border to me is a big pause button,
I often dream of going back,
Who will I be then, when I hit play?
Who will I speak with to recover my grandmother’s prayers,
To collect 12 years of unclaimed hugs,
All the wrinkles and gray hairs I missed on her hair,
And every step I couldn’t walk by her.
But one day I will cross back,
In the middle of songs and candles I will conjure her spirit,
And I will look in the back of that old closet
Where she saved my table games
And there I will find her love
And her songs, her advice, her songs,
And the little pieces she left for me, hidden for me,
When she envisioned the day
That this pause would be over.

it became a perpetual motion
a dance
someone hands the card, another lights
the amount of aching discolored grazed fingers was immense
put your finger on the flint wheel
press it down

karen thought we should make a sign
the scrambles of bruised fingers for a piece of cardboard
my fingers throbbed as i scratched our message on the board
i kept the pink flower locked in the crease of my hand
and threw them in air
“draft card burning here”

it was 7 00 in the morning
october 21 1967
i was only 17
my brother jeffrey was flying a plane over dien bien phu
a friend richard was screaming in the trenches of xuan loc
a lover michael treading through a swamp in mui bai ****

i stepped up to The Police.
The. Men. In. Suits. Stared. At. Me
Blank. Faces. And. No. Expression.
I picked up my Pink Daisy, and brought it up to their bayonets
this is for Jeffrey, for Richard, and for Michael

the men in suits stared at me
in a world of chaos and confusion
all I heard was
Silence.

In those days, at every corner of the city
you could find a coffee shop.

There was never a high-rise building,
everything stood together in an unorganized manner,
for they never mastered the art of urban landscaping.

Street vendors had their own way of singing
their promotion songs. You remembered the tune, the words,
which reminded you of those streets.

The sounds of vehicles and their horns and the winds
never stopped. But in those days, they used to be
purer. Clearer. More innocent, perhaps. Less troubled.

Life never stops being tough,
but it was quite beautiful,
then.

When I grew up
the city was still left with fragments of history.
I had no memory of what had happened before I was born,
yet you felt in the air the gentle sadness, and the subtle beauty
from those French buildings. The architecture
slowly faded away as icons from the war,
becoming part of our modern life.
We had to move on,
and so did everyone who had left.

Those buildings, instead, became icons of my childhood,
of what I remembered about the city.
From my elementary school,
you could see the Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica to your left,
the Central Post Office right in front of you.
I was always taken home via the street former known as
the Rue Catinat.

I would never forget the way it felt every afternoon.
I'm going home.

Those places have changed, and so have people,
and so have I.
The day they demolished Givral Cafe,
Xuan Thu Bookstore, Passage Eden,
the whole street block of memories,
was the day many of us lost something so deep in our heart.
History was gone once again.
And soon enough,
we would allow ourselves to forget once again.

I keep reminding myself,
Hey, it's ok to change.
My city does not repond to me.
It just becomes so foreign,
as if it has always belonged to somebody else
but me. And I keep digging
into the dust, the traces, the pictures
to find solace in what I could remember
about my changed lover.

They say, in the end it does not matter,
modern society needs revolutions.
Evolutions. Higher skyscrapers. Highways.
A North-South express railway even (Idea rejected.)
We need to catch up with the rest of the world.

Oh, dear men, I am fine with that. I am an easy fellow
who seldom feels too strongly about anything in particular.
But my heart keeps aching from some changes you guys make.
It outraged the day you took down my corner of memories.
I was in Boston reading the news my friends sent me,
picturing myself sitting at those steps in front of the Opera House
looking at the mass of broken bricks and dust
that was once a nice, little, iconic coffee shop-
Givral.

When my friend talked to me about changes around that block,
she talked in a tone that almost seemed guilty.
She did not know how to break the news to me
without also breaking me apart.
For just a few months before that,
we were walking down **** Khoi Street (the Rue Catinat, if you may),
taking pictures of the Opera House,
Givral Café, the Continental Hotel,
joking of how we acted like tourists.

Try being a tourist in your own city.
It means seeing everything with a fresh set of eyes,
trying to record everything,
trying to grasp the essence of everything
within a short amount of time.
I guarantee you it is fun.
And it will reinvigorate your love,
your understanding, your hope.

I was disappointed with some decisions others made.
Yet, being a city girl,
I was raised to adapt to them.
To learn that there will be thousands of other coffee shops
bookstores
landmarks
so many choices to overwhelm me
to drive me away from the time
when I had so few.

Will it eventually work? I do not know.
But that corner of the street (now demolished),
that corner of memory (now fading),
I was there.
Yes, I was there.