A poem in Vietnamese by Tản Đà
Translator: Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm

The drunken verses

A Human’s life is like a dream

A thousand years’ nothing, what’s a hundred?

Work work work, committed in body and spirit,

Coveting a ripe old age for what!

Having money doesn’t mean it can be spent,

People’s greed for fame’s like a kite with broken strings.

–

How could I bother anyone with my love

To be empty of wine, to have a bag full of poetry!

Life is like the wind, the rain,

Why be sad, why not drown such sadness in drunken pain

Drunk, the poetry may re-ignite,

The burning poetry, the burning drunkenness, the amorous voice.

Drunken poetry and I unite

Drunk out of mind, out of sight is the ephemeral.

A hundred years of poetry in drunkenness

Who will be the drunken poet for a thousand years?

_____

JANUARY 2022

Thơ Rượu

Đời người như giấc chiêm bao

Nghìn xưa đã mấy ai nào trăm năm?

Một đoàn lao lực lao tâm,

Quý chi chữ thọ mà lăm sống nhiều!

Có tiền chưa dễ mà tiêu,

Ham danh lắm kẻ như diều đứt dây.

–

Thương ai cho bận lòng đây

Cho vơi hũ rượu, cho đầy túi thơ!

Cảnh đời gió gió, mưa mưa,

Buồn trông ta phải say sưa đỡ buồn!

Rượu say, thơ lại khơi nguồn,

Nên thơ, rượu cũng thêm ngon giọng tình.

Rượu thơ mình lại với mình

Khi say quên cả cái hình phù du.

Trăm năm thơ túi rượu vò

Nghìn năm thi sĩ tửu đồ là ai?

_____

Tản Đà, the poet was born Nguyễn Khắc Hiếu on 19 May 1889 in Ba Vi, died on 7 June 1939 in Hanoi, Vietnam. He used both traditional Sino-Vietnamese forms and European influences and was a transitional figure between the turn of the 1890s such as Tú Xương and Nguyễn Khuyến and the “New Poetry” movement of the 1930s.

Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm, the blogger, poet, and translator, was born in 1971 in Phu Nhuan, Saigon, Vietnam. The pharmacist currently lives and works in Western Sydney, Australia.