You’re Coming to See Me on New Year’s Eve | Nguyễn Đình Toàn

A poem in Vietnamese by The poet & Composer Nguyễn Đình Toàn & The Musician and Composer Vũ Thành An
Translator: Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm
Art: Đinh Trường Chinh

You’re coming to see me on new year’s eve
Me declaring to a street sweeper
(yes her, she’s coming!)
Could another evening be happier, than new year’s eve
As proof of my love allow me please
The memory of an autumn leaf.

Your fingers are cold so warm be our love
Your lips soft so scented is the breath of your sleep
Green are the new year’s stars in your kind eyes
The heavens are twinkling anew
Or our hearts born anew.

Time passing by
Stale is our taste for each other
The long departures
The hint of an enduring scent, lost
In the coming storms
Through the fall of the seasons.

Oh sleepless is the sound river of the night
The blooming of a thousand stars, or
Tears of separation, follow by
The death of crumbling rocks
Beyond the pits of dark despair
The endless fall down nothingness
The pain of a love affair.

November 2023
_____

Em Đến Thăm Anh Đêm 30

(Thi sĩ Nguyễn Đình Toàn và Nhạc sĩ Vũ Thành An)

Em đến thăm anh đêm ba mươi
Còn đêm nào vui bằng đêm ba mươi
Anh nói với người phu quét đường
Xin chiếc lá vàng làm bằng chứng yêu em.

Tay em lạnh để cho tình mình ấm
Môi em mềm cho giấc ngủ em thơm
Sao giao thừa xanh trong đôi mắt ngoan
Trời sắp Tết hay lòng mình đang Tết.

Tháng ngày đã trôi qua
Tình đã phôi pha, người khuất xa
Chỉ còn chút hương xưa
Rồi cũng phong ba rụng cùng mùa.

Dòng sông đêm hồn đen sâu thao thức
Ngàn vì sao mọc hay lệ khóc nhau
Đá buồn chết theo sau ngày vực sâu
Rớt hoài xuống hư không cuộc tình đau.


Nguyễn Đình Toàn first penned under Tô Hà Vân, born September 6th, 1936 at Gia Lâm, by the Red river, outside of Hanoi, the poet and musician passed away on November 28th, 2013 at Fountain Valley, California, U.S.A. Left for South Vietnam in 1954, there he became actively involved in the arts, literature, poetry, plays, and music, in association with literary magazines like Văn, Văn học. He collaborated with Trần Phong Giao for many years in the selection of literature for Văn Magazine. He took up the position as the editor of Saigon Radio after that and became known for the Music program in the early seventies. He was captured twice after 1975 and was imprisoned in a re-education camp for nearly six years. He and his wife, Madame Thu Hồng, settled in the United States of America at the end of 1998.

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.

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By Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm

There's magic in translating a body of work from one language to another.

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