Black Stars

Translated by Martha Collins and Ngo Tu Lap

A bilingual edition, with carefully rendered translations by Martha Collins and author, contemporary Vietnamese poet Ngo Tu Lap. Black Stars introduces a man who is both attached to his war-haunted childhood home and deeply conversant with contemporary global life. With poems simultaneously occupying past, present, and future, Black Stars escapes the confines of time and space, suffusing image with memory, abstraction with meaning, and darkness with abundant light.

 

This is a book of uninterrupted memory. The 1960’ssaw the beginning of what is now known as the Viet Nam war— and so did our poet. But there is no stridency here, no vindication. Here is a writer who has seen the worst and written the best. His intensity comes from a gentle tone, and his spare beauty brings us insight sweetened by introspection. He was born in Hanoi in 1962 and evacuated because of the war. Through this book, Lap takes flight from his youth with a narrative flow that bears the imprint of our greatest ancient poets.”     —  Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books

Reading Ngo Tu Lap’s poems, terrible nostalgia wells up in me—nostalgia for a lost time and a far-gone country, nostalgia for people I’ve loved, and for creatures of forests and rivers. I feel gratitude too. War is over. Peace arrives with these beautiful poems.”     — Maxine Hong Kingston

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Black Stars

Many months have passed, drenched in sweat
But I have returned
To boldly place on the table
Two hands, two five-pointed stars

Stories of war and shipwreck don’t attract me
When I close my eyes, two stars fly into the darkness

To fly is to see how lofty the sky is, how wide the sea
There, in the village, a rooster is crowing
In the scent of burning ricefields, dew is sparkling
Over there is my mother
There, my country

On guns and plows, millions of diligent stars
Are flying in silence
Black stars, black stars

One life might have drifted away
But one has returned
When I open my eyes, two stars light
Before me
Pulsing, breathing

A Sandal Dropped in a Swamp

It leaves a streak, a comet tensed
Like a smile stopped abruptly on stunned lips

It sinks, making its way
Through thick darkness
Through bubbles rushing up like complex plots

Among the rotten leaves are green leaves
And a panicked eel

The sandal crawls over a soldier's uniform
Around a chair with broken legs
Beside shattered cups and bowls

Which of these bears the trace
Of sudden joy, the trace of a quarrel?

Waiting, the letters yellowed and crumbled
They still wait beside a delayed-fuse bomb

On the finger of a woman who died young
A ring still sparkles
In the depths of the black earth

See Martha Collins’ essay about this poem