Two poems by Ho Xuan Huong (Vietnamese, 18th c.) translated by John
Balaban [used by permission of the translator; may not be reproduced in
any form without permission of John Balaban.] I post them in this thread
in an attempt to provide a different historical & cultural perspective.

"The Pharmacist's Widow Mourns His Death"

What's all this wailing on our ears?
If she loved him, she'd weep more softly.

Perhaps she just misses his licorice stick
or that cinnamon stob, always so tasty.

Raw orange peel and rosebuds now abandoned.
His celery stalk and lily seeds all lost.

To whom will she give his little scalpel?
To live is to borrow. To die: a giving back.

=

"Swinging"

Praise whoever raised these poles
for some to swing while others watch.

A boy pumps, then arcs his back.
The shapely girl shoves up her hips.

Four pink trousers flapping hard,
tow pairs of legs stretched side by side.

Spring games. Who hasn't known them?
Swingposts removed, the holes lie empty.

=
Notes
Both poems are from the forthcoming volume _Spring Essence_ (Copper
Canyon, Oct. 2000). "Spring Essence" is the literal meaning of the
poet's name, Xuan Huong--Ho being her clan name. She was the "second
wife" or concubine of two different officials in the Nguyen court. The
late eighteenth & early nineteenth c. Nguyen emperors established a
strict Confucianism in VN, creating a hierarchical & authoritarian &
puritanical social structure, at least for the upper classes. During
periods of Confucian dominance in VN women were strictly controlled &
repressed; periods of Buddhist dominance tended to relax such strictures
without ever letting them go entirely. Nobody during the eighteenth c.
wrote explicitly about sex, but especially not women. Ho Xuan Huong
mastered an exceedingly complex set of poetic forms & procedures in
order to write & make public her views of VN society & her personal
story. She remains one of the most popular poets in Viet Nam--when I was
in HCMC a few months back there were several different editions of her
poems available in the bookstore.

The first poem, about the pharmacist's wife, uses obvious & conventional
male symbols in a satirical way, but the peeled orange & the rosebuds
are female symbols for nakedness & virginal sexuality. The poem is laced
with puns it would take a week to explicate. The second poem puns on the
poet's name. The words for _swing_ & _copulate_ are differentiated in
Vietnamese only by the syllable tone (I can't reproduce the diacritical
marks in plain text, alas.)


________________________
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts-5750
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
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________________________

"Always come down from the barren heights
of cleverness into the green valleys of folly."
 ::Wittgenstein




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