Ho Xuan Huong

translated from the Vietnamese by John Balaban

Autumn Landscape

Drop by drop rain slaps the banana leaves.
Praise whoever sketched this desolate scene:

the lush, dark canopies of the gnarled trees,
the long river, sliding smooth and white.

I lift my wine flask, drunk with rivers and hills.
My backpack, breathing moonlight, sags with poems.

Look, and love everyone.
Whoever sees this landscape is stunned.

Note: The poem bag carried by wandering poets and young scholars usually held samples of their poetry and calligraphy.

On Sharing a Husband

Screw the fate that makes you share a man.
One cuddles under cotton blankets; the other's cold.

Every now and then, well, maybe or maybe not,
once or twice a month, oh, it's like nothing.

You try to stick to it like a fly on rice
but the rice is rotten.  You slave like the maid,

but without pay.  If I had known how it would go
I think I would have lived alone.

Note: Ho Xuan Huong, like her mother, was a vo le, a concubine, or wife of second rank. Traditionally, Vietnamese women wielded considerable economic and political power, but by 1800 the condition of women had deteriorated as the Vietnamese nation itself began a collapse under domestic and foreign pressures. Many women could choose only between struggling alone or becoming concubines, risking the indignities in this poem. Men, meanwhile, could have many wives. The king was permitted 126 wives iin six different categories, while even a student scholar could have "five concubines, seven wives." See Hoa Bang, Ho Xuan Huong, Nha Tho Cach Mang (Saigon: Gon Phuong, 1950), p. 106. Chem cha ("screw") is a curse, meaning "cut father." Nam thi muoi hoa ("five out of ten times") is a folk expression.

Jackfruit

My body is like the jackfruit on the branch:
my skin is coarse, my meat is thick.

Kind sir, if you love me, pierce me with your stick.
Caress me and sap will slicken your hands.

Note: The large, smelly jackfruit can be prematurely ripened by piercing it.

Three-Mountain Pass

A cliff face. Another. And still a third.
Who was so skilled to carve this craggy scene:

the cavern's red door, the ridge's narrow cleft,
the black knoll bearded with little mosses?

A twisting pine bough plunges in the wind,
showering a willow's leaves with glistening drops.

Gentlemen, lords, who could refuse, though weary
and shaky in his knees, to mount once more?

Note: Maurice Durand notes that this range is almost certainly the Deo Tam Diep in central North Vietnam where the mountains are calcareous and of a blackish color but, he adds innocently, "I'on n'a pas de grotte avec une grande ouventure." While an actual landscape may have suggested this poem to Ho Xuan Huong, the particular contours--the active pine and willows--comprise a sexual landscape as well. Pines traditionally stand for men; willows, for women.

Weaving at Night

Lampwick turned up, the room glows white.
The looms moves easily all night long

as feet work and push below.
Nimbly the shuttle flies in and out,

wide or narrow, big or small, sliding in snug.
Long or short, it glides out smoothly.

Girls who do it right, let it soak

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