INTRODUCTION: This poem, “The Two Sea Voyages”, was inspired by the author’s real-life comparison of two sea voyages which he embarked on.
The sea voyage from the past was on a fragile wooden river boat with only the bow modified to cross the sea. Throughout the journey, the author and his fellow refugees were almost certain that they would meet a grisly end by hunger, imprisonment, or death. There was only a small sliver of hope that they could reach shore and find freedom. To those refugees, having such freedom seemed beyond the realm of their imagination and expectation –for it is a rare luck and wondrous miracle.
The second sea voyage was a cruise trip that the author went on with his friends and family last summer. It lays in stark contrast to the refugee journey the author went on long ago, and was the inspiration for this poem.
The refugee journey took the author to the Pulau Bidong refugee camp in Malaysia. The first image which comes to the author’s mind is that of the wreck of an iron ship lays on the coast of this isle (Pulau). The people’s story told that the iron ship carried nearly six hundred people crossed the sea and sank off the coast of the island, killing almost everyone on board. However, for some mysterious reason, the currents eventually pushed the ship ashore. Many people on the island believed that perhaps the spirits of those who died on that ship, did not want their voyage to have no destination, so they caused the ship to drift ashore – as the final and sacred wish that they must fulfill in this life. Others say that one can find the human bones buried in that ill-fated ship. Unknowingly, the Malaysian government and the UNHCR still leave the shipwreck as it is.
We bow our heads in silence and pay our respects to the hundreds of thousands of unfortunate Vietnamese boat people who never reached the shores of their sea crossing.
This poem is a meaningful reminder for the author himself to not forget his own identity: THE VIETNAMESE BOAT PEOPLE.
THE TWO SEA VOYAGES
Looking at the sea today
thinking of the sea long ago
It’s only the sea
only another voyage
But the voyage today
and the voyage long ago
are more different than night and day
oOo
The voyage long ago
The voyage today
The setting of the boat
The meaning of the journey
I have mixed feelings
So much to comfort
So much to embrace
So much to endure
Every time I look back
My grief still abounds
oOo
The sea of the old voyage
is not crystal blue
It is black sea of lurking death:
It seduces the soul,
frightens the eyes,
terrifies the heart,
scares the mind.
The sea of savage fury
Screaming for sacrifices –
Oh those soulless escapees!
Those afflicted mourners
Tired from thirst and hunger
No strength left
Just wait to let go of life.
oOo
The waves of the old voyage
do not pat the boat’s sides.
In bad weather, the sea is rough
Billowing waves with silvery tops
When night falls on the sea
The waves rise quickly
With horrifying dark waves
like a house with many floors
like a sea monster
With violence and thirst
Every time it crashes on us
It tries to sink the boat.
In this fragile boat
Sixty-one shadows.
Scared pale faces
Numbed by fear
Some pray to God
Some pray to Buddha
The line between life and death
is thinner by the minute.
There is a voice singing
Like a mother’s lullaby
Echoing from the deep sea
Like a summoning call.
The call entices us to hell,
to the bottom of a black sea
My heart trembles
My prayers grow hurried
The boat passes through the swirling sea
The sky and the sea are dark.
There is an ill-fated boat that
Sinks into the dark ocean
There is a girl who prays,
not with incense,
But cuts her hair into the water
In the night, the chanting grows.
oOo
Five days and nights across the sea
In a fragile wooden boat
At year’s end, the sea is rough
Life is held at a knife’s edge.
Five days and nights across the sea
I thought the boat was broken
by the rough waves
as a sacrifice to the ghosts
Five days and nights across the sea
Death is always lurking
Every moment of dread
Facing life and death
Five days and nights across the sea
The struggle has ended
The mainland is seen
Tears of joy burst out.
Sixty-one people
Off the boat of destiny
So speechless but thankful
to this blessed boat.
Next is the good news
After a few hours ashore
A pregnant woman is in labor
And a baby is born …
oOo
Tragic story of my hometown
Years of war ruined
A long life of suffering
Full of blood and tears
Full of cuts and wounds
Full of injustices and fear
Thousands people crossed the sea
Risk their lives on the ocean.
The Vietnamese who crossed the sea
Faced all kinds of calamities:
Imprisonment when caught
Hunger was common.
Misfortune to those broken engine boats
Or those lost navigating for months
In the immense of the sea
Meeting the Demon King is likely.
Throughout the journey across the sea
Death is always lurking
Not to mention the pirates
Not only raid and plunder
but cruel beyond measure.
Inhuman bandits
Pillages and rapes
Like savage barbarians.
oOo
There was a boat
Thirty-two people
Navigation went lost for over a month.
Facing exhaustion and starvation
Those who were so frail
Just died at sea
And those who were alive
Just ate corpses to survive.
When the boat finally arrived
Half of them had died
The other half who remained
Drifted like ghosts
Their gazes were soulless
With their eyes sunken
With their skin darkened
From jaundice and edema.
oOo
There was a boat
Seventy-two people.
When they reached the shore,
Only one survived.
The ship ran into pirates
Who robbed and killed
The men were thrown into the sea
The women were raped.
There was a wife who bites her tongue
because of insult by the pirates
There was a husband who bleeds
because of his resentment.
There was a mother who risked her life
desperate to protect her child.
The only surviving girl who went mad
as such tragedy haunts her still.
oOo
The story of the Vietnamese crossing the sea
Is a story full of tragedy,
full of blood and tears,
and full of life-changing stories.
The story of the Vietnamese crossing the sea
Is the great depression of our nation
In the face of imprisonment and death
The boats still sailed.
Maybe we were not scared of prison,
Not afraid of death, my people?
If anyone there ever asked
Then the question was already answered.
The story of the Vietnamese crossing the sea
In the twentieth century,
became a historical vestige
that shocked humanity
The story of the Vietnamese crossing the sea
Despite all the dangers
We must add words to our history
And record “THE VIETNAMESE BOAT PEOPLE”.
oOo
The voyage long ago
The voyage today
Two voyages in a lifetime
when compared, I felt a limp in my heart
Like my life hobbled on as I struggled forward
And after all these years I struggle still.
Limping in the heart
Like a pain in my life.
Every step forward has
a shadow turning back
Behind a bright smile
a painful stain hides.
The voyage long ago
The voyage today
Two voyages in a lifetime
must be compared as those
memories engraved in my heart
need not reminding myself
An identity which I must keep – for the
“VIETNAMESE BOAT PEOPLE”
is the identity I received.
oOo
The history of the boat people
is full of the grief and hatred
Of the people in Vietnam
in a time of national crisis.
The history of the boat people
is a scene of the hellish life
Of the people in Vietnam
at the very heart of truth
The history of the boat people
is the cry in silence
of many Vietnamese generations
full of blood and tears.
The history of the boat people
to struggle against the death
to find a way to live
and to live as humans
The history of the boat people
Who escaped in pursuit of hope
in the midst of despair
in their miserable life
The history of the boat people
Is part of Vietnamese History
A part of the country
But not in Viet Nam itself
The history of the boat people
Today still has life:
The gift of freedom did
Not fall from the sky,
But rose from the Earth
Cultivated with human life
Poem by huhao (2018)
Translated by Le Duy Nam
