A Piece of My Meditative Heart

Khúc Tâm Tư

Nếu anh hỏi: đời em mơ gì nhất?
- Nghe tiếng bổng trầm anh nói: "Em yêu,
Anh nhớ hoàng hôn vương sợi nắng chiều,
Bờ môi ấm dìu tình ta du ngoạn"

Nếu anh hỏi: ngày nào em mơ nhất?
- Ngày mỗi ngày, giây phút ánh trăng êm
Trời mờ sương anh bên cửa buông rèm
Quyện hình em suốt đêm dài vô tận

Nếu anh hỏi: đường nào em mơ nhất?
- Con đường tình bước âu yếm, thủy chung
Để hồn em không cay đắng nghìn trùng
Chia chăn gối với bóng hồng xa lạ

Nếu anh hỏi: nữ trang em mơ nhất?
- Em quí vô ngần châu hạt kim cương
Là giọt lệ lóng lánh Chúa thiên đường
Làm rơi xuống trần gian đầy sầu khổ

Nếu anh hỏi: đời sau mơ gì nhất?
- Là Nữ Hoàng! Thánh nữ của lòng anh
Chốn thiên cung ta tấu khúc "Xuất Hành"
Tôn thờ Chúa Ba Ngôi Vua Vũ Trụ.

Chúc Anh
Sàigòn 1974


A PIECE OF MY MEDITATIVE HEART

If you ask: what I dream the most?
-Your melodious voice that says: " My love,
I always remember the lingering light of the late afternoon
Shining on us as we travel on kisses."

If you ask: what day I dream the most of?
-It's not the day, but the night, and every night
As the moonlight gently shines through the the gathering fog,
You let the window curtain fall
And your body entertwine with mine
Throughout the endlless night

If you ask: which road I dream to walk on?
-The road of cherished, everlasting love
So my heart knows no enduring bitterness
If I have to share you with a rival unknown

If you ask: which piece of jewelry I most treasure?
-The sparkling diamond from heaven falling to earth,
The tear of loving Christ for the suffering world

And if you ask: what do I wish most in the hereafter?
-Your Queen! The Sacred Angel of your heart
Together in Heaven we sing "Forward On We March"
In the Endless Glory of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

Translated by Wissai/NKBa'
May 5, 2012

P.S.:

I shared the translation because some lines in the translation were even better than those in the Vietnamese original. I challenge and defy anyone who could improve on my translation. As I toil in obscurity, my pride soars and my loneliness melts away.

Christmas means nothing to me as do most religious tenets and doctrines. They help the stupid and the ignorant, not me , because I think more deeply than most so-called religious leaders. The Catholic Pope is a piece of shit. I hate the Catholic Church. The rites and vestments are full of pageantry, borrowed from the Roman Imperial Court. Most religious believers are stupid spiritual slaves who don't know their "leaders" despise them for their stupidity.

I am looking into cognitive science. If you study this subject, you will realize that you are special and part of the elite thinkers. The mere that a human can stand in front of a group of his fellow humans and hold their attention for a long period of time through his speech or singing is a marvel by itself and should be investigated by contemplative humans. And I am such a human. I am fiercely interested into the nature and process of thinking and why so-called educated persons who finished college still subscribe to superstition and self-deception.

Translation is a way to help me witness my brain at work: access to storage of memory and the interface of thoughts and language. Let's backtrack to the last two lines of the first stanza of the translation. They were far, far better than those in the Vietnamese original. When I wrote those two lines, I touched something sublime and magical in the art of using words to express the ineffable.