A Request at Dong Loc Cemetery

That’s enough for ten bowls
The rest of incense, let’s save for others
We’re not the sole fallen ones
So much blood and bone was spent for Dong Loc
Memories, let’s spread evenly
Like grass in the valley, sunlight on the hill.
Look! Tongue-grass buds cling to the pants!
O you red-scarfed children standing straight by the tombs
You love us so much, don’t you?
Then, go home, find little plants
Plant them on Tro Voi Hill and on these bare lands
We’re so thirsty longing for some tree shades!
Twenty-seven years have passed, we haven’t grown a day
Three times changing bed, we’re now back in Dong Loc
Friends, if you love us, don’t cry!
Go back and tend the rice for better harvest
The last meals we ten had no rice
Just a handful of cassava, then out with hoes we went.
Our needs? One afternoon someone has asked
We’re not yet married and haven’t got a chance to love
When the bomb buried us all, our hair was enmeshed in dust
Lying here in these tombs, we haven’t got a chance to wash our hair
We ask that on the parched ground of this cemetery
Someone would grow some carob tree(*)
That spread fragrance evenly in the ethereal incense smoke…

Vuong Trong, Dong Loc, July 5, 1995

Note: Having read Vuong Trong’s Request, I plant two carob trees at this cemetery today, August 19, 1998 – Colonel Nguyen Tien Tuan, Ha Tinh Police

(*) Note by translator: Carob or locust tree is a kind of leguminous tree, the pods of which are boiled in water and the resulting liquid is used as hair shampoo.
Translated by Trần Đình Hoành (A Vietnamese resident in USA).

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