về một loài chim không bay đi on a species of bird that doesn’t fly away

về một loài chim không bay đi

ta có thể chuẩn bị gì cho ngày lên đường, hay chỉ có thể tự trấn an bằng những lộ trình dự trước, những bản đồ dự liệu và không thôi hình dung về những con đường mình sẽ đi qua. đêm trước, ta bắt gặp những đoạn thời chững lại của thời gian, khi một cánh chim non lạc hướng quanh quẩn mãi trong nhà, ta đương ngồi nghe hơi thở gian ngoài vọng nhịp võng gian trong, vài quãng lặng thắt dồn trong buồng ngực, và bắt đầu khó thở vì những hình dung yếm khí, lổn nhổn những ngón tay ẩn nấp trong mái tóc em, đôi khi chúng nói với ta rằng chúng là bùn đất trong lòng những con sông cạn, đã nhiều năm, chúng nhớ một loài cỏ nước không tên, nỗi nhớ ấy đã đem chúng tới đây, lặn vào tóc em những chiều gội đầu góc sân gạch đỏ, đôi khi chúng hát những câu hát xuôi theo mạch nước và khéo rủ ta hãy cất bước đi, hướng biển, hướng mênh mông, ta đáp, rằng hướng nào cũng hướng mênh mông, nào, đừng làm ta xao lãng cánh chim non, ta đang nhìn nó tìm lối ra, nhưng nó cứ đập cánh mãi nơi đỉnh màn bố ta nằm, ngay hướng mắt người nhìn lên, cứ thế, nó lộ ra những nhúm lông bụng vàng, không phải vành khuyên hay chim sâu xanh, ta đoán, không cất tiếng hoảng loạn, nó lượn vòng, lượn vòng, ta nhớ lại một lựa chọn định vị, ta từng cất giấu đâu đó một bản đồ dẫn tới Vân Nam, nơi có ba con sông chảy song song, một dòng bắt xuống địa vực phía nam mà người ta gọi tên là Mekong, là phía nam Vân Nam, cũng là phía nam ta, bởi một lẽ thật đơn giản: ta sinh ra ở Bắc, ồ vậy ta sẽ đặt tên cho những ngón tay ẩn nấp trong mái tóc em là ở phía tim tôi, phía ứa nhiều nước mắt, ta lục tìm lại tấm bản đồ dẫn tới Vân Nam thì nhận ra ta đã cất nó trong một chiếc rương cũ và đặt tên chiếc rương là mất mát, ta hoảng loạn thoáng chốc, tìm kiếm mất mát ư, phải rồi, như những ngón tay ẩn nấp trong mái tóc em, ta là bùn đất, nghĩ đến đấy, tiếng lạch phạch cánh chim non làm ta ngừng miên man, khi ngoảnh lại, ta nhận ra bố ta mất đã bao năm, ta sựng người một chốc, sao loài chim kia không bay đi?
 

on a species of bird that doesn’t fly away

how can we prepare to set off, or can we rely on the routes already written, the maps already drawn, endlessly picturing the road ahead. last night, we walked into suspended moments, when a lost bird drifted around the house, we listened to the breath of the outside sigh in time to the hammock sway, a few moments of silence gathered in the chest, and I couldn’t breathe, the tangled images, my fingers in your hair, sometimes they tell me they are the alluvium in dried-up riverbeds from years ago, remembering nameless water weeds, and that nostalgia brought them here, diving into your hair as you wash it in the afternoons, in the corner of the red brick yard, sometimes they sing along with the stream, nearly inviting a step towards the sea, the direction of the vast, I reply there is vastness in every direction, wait, don’t distract me from this baby bird’s flight, I am watching it find its way out, but it keeps flapping its wings around the summit of the mosquito net that covers my father, on and on, right in your line of sight, revealing tufts of golden belly feathers, not a goldfinch nor a flowerpecker, I think, and without crying out in panic it keeps circling, circling, I remember an alternate route, somewhere I hid a map leading to Yunnan, where three rivers flow in parallel, one juts down to the southern region, the Mekong, south of Yunnan, also south of me simply because I was born in the north, oh then I’ll name the fingers hiding in your hair heartwards, where tears overflow, I rummage for the map to Yunnan, and realising I’d kept it in an old chest and named the chest loss, I briefly panicked, is this looking for loss, yes, like fingers hiding in your hair, I am the alluvium, and just then, the flap of the baby bird’s wings breaks my long reverie, when I look back, realising how long it’s been since my father’s loss, I freeze in this moment, why hasn’t the bird flown away?
 

on a species of bird that doesn’t fly away

what can we prepare for the day to go on the road, or can we just assure ourselves with planned routes, predictable maps and endless visualization of the roads we will go through. last night, we encountered periods of stagnation in time, when a lost bird wandered forever around in the house, we were listening to the breath of the outside echoing the rhythm falling inside space, a few moments of silence gathered in the chest, and begin to have difficulty breathing because of the anaerobic visualization, tangled visions of your fingers hiding in your hair, sometimes they tell me they are the mud in the beds of shallow rivers, it's been many years, they remember a nameless water weeds, that nostalgia brought them here, diving into your hair in the afternoons washing your hair in the corner of the red brick yard, sometimes they sing songs down the stream and nearly invited you to take a step towards the sea , the direction of the vast, I replied, that every direction goes to the vast, come, don't make me neglect baby bird’s wing, I am watching it find its way out, but it keeps flapping its wings at the top of the curtain where my father lies, right in the direction your eyes look up, just like that, it shows tufts of golden belly feathers, not a ring or a blue worm, I guess, without making a sound of panic, it's circling, circling, I remember a navigation option, I hid somewhere a map leading to Yunnan, where three rivers flow parallel, one of which flows down to the southern region that people call the Mekong, which is south of Yunnan, also south of me, for one simple truth: I was born in the North, oh so I'll name the fingers hiding in your hair the side of my heart, the side spilling tears, I rummage through the map to Yunnan and realizing i'd kept it in an old chest and named the chest lost, I panicked for a moment, looking for loss, yes, like fingers lurking in your hair, I'm the mud, thinking about it, the rattle of baby birds' wings makes me stop, when I look back, realizing how many years have passed since my father passed away, I froze for a moment. the bird didn't fly away?
 

First Workshop Session

We only had time to attempt the first quarter of this rich new prose poem by Linh San, stopping just as the speaker begins to recount a memory they, like the bird in the title, can only circle around but never leave. By the poem’s close, they will reveal the death of a father, but in our hour-long workshop, we could only look at the opening scene: the previous night spent with an intimate ‘you’.

The second sentence (beginning ‘last night’) is nearly four hundred words long. This is easier to follow in Vietnamese than it might be in English, our lead translator Phương Anh Nguyen told us. The poet’s list of clauses creates lots of nice ambiguities with time: does ‘when a lost bird drifted…’ occur at the same time as the previous phrase, or the following one? The original doesn’t make this clear, and so neither does our working translation.

If we’d had enough time to work through the whole poem, we would have returned to polish the beginning and represent better the monosyllabic musicality of the original – but, for now, this is our entry point into Linh San’s latest prose poem.

Second Workshop Session

It was a pleasure to return to ‘on a species of bird that doesn’t fly away’ by Linh San, with translator Phương Anh Nguyen. We dove straight into the middle of the poem, at a moment of transition: having begun with memories of the previous night, the speaker now recalls moments from deeper in their past. This poem continued to be slippery in its syntax, and the group decided to balance keeping that ambiguity in our translation with making the poem comprehensible. As before, we questioned whether to translate ‘ta’ as ‘you’, ‘we’, or ‘I’; and is it the fingers which are the ‘they’ or some other entity?

At other moments, we had to lean into specificity. This section is full of river and water imagery, provoking discussions around the right terms for what you’d find in a dried-up river: mud or silt? The poem then moves back to last night and the bird flapping around the house; we also reached the first reference to the father who, by the poem’s end, we will discover has died. Again we wrestled with specificity – would we translate him under a curtain, a veil, a drape, or the more prosaic (but accurate) mosquito net?

We hope to be able to finish this poem in a future session, but for now, here’s as far as we got with this incantatory, immersive poem.

Third Workshop Session

Picking up from the bird ‘flapping its wings around the summit of the mosquito net that covers my father’, we were pleased to finish translating this rich prose poem in our third workshop. Here at the end of the poem, the speaker addresses the death of their father more directly, paralleling their grief with the baby bird flying around the room. The ideas of geography and loss/getting lost from earlier in the poem come back again too, as we reach the end of this 400 word sentence – which itself ends on a question mark, giving us (as grief does) little resolution.

One of our first challenges as translators in this final section was how to render South East Asian ornithology in English. The speaker isn’t sure what the baby bird is, but thinks they know the two species that it isn’t. According to Phương Anh, both the birds mentioned are kinds of passerine birds. We decided to give one a more specific name within the passerine order (‘goldfinch’, which exists in both Vietnam and the UK, and which has those ‘golden belly feathers’) and the other another evocative family name, ‘flowerpecker’ (which exists in Vietnam and not in the UK, but can be understood to be a bird from the context). Ornithologists, please forgive us for any mistakes, and submit your own translations!

On the other hand, one of our greatest successes in this section involved one participant’s suggestion of ‘heartwards’ as the name for ‘the fingers hiding in your hair’. Phương Anh’s first translation rendered this phrase: ‘I’ll name the fingers hiding in your hair the side of my heart’, and we felt ‘heartwards’ reflected the strangeness of this phrase succinctly and creatively in English. Other great points included naming the chest from ‘loss’ instead of ‘lost’, emphasising the speaker’s grief; and the use of ‘alluvium’ where previously we’d had ‘silt’ because, as one participant pointed out, alluvium is a specific and important material to Vietnam and its artists (see Thao Nguyen Phan’s Becoming Alluvium as an example). This led to the iconic, declamatory phrase ‘I am the alluvium’, which we’d like to see printed on t-shirts.

Once again, it was a joy to translate this poem with Phương Anh and the PTC workshop group! We hope you enjoy reading our collaborative translation

Helen Bowell, Poet Facilitator


Original Poem by

Linh San

Translated by

Phương Anh Nguyen with The Poetry Translation Workshop Language

Vietnamese

Country

Vietnam