Between the Lines, Words Still Unspoken
By Phan Tan Hai
I have a friend back in our poor homeland—
countless stories, still wandering each day,
a traveling healer on his bicycle,
carrying needles, old books, and sometimes
a few half-finished poems
seeking someone to offer a thought.
Many days he lacked enough rice
to feed his wife and children,
yet in that terrible hunger
he stayed optimistic,
praying with his beads at the temple,
sipping sidewalk coffee, unhurried,
reading aloud the sutra of “forgiving others,”
though our generation
had done nothing wrong—
our hands and feet calloused
from the rare joy
of finding a day’s labor.
In a time when childhood poems
were tossed into the street
to forget a whole life,
he saved every coin
hoping one day to buy a rickshaw
and pull it through Sài Gòn’s sidewalks,
so his children could grow up
knowing enough letters
to look into their father’s tearful eyes
and read again
the words still unspoken
between the lines of his poems.
I have another friend—
a bond beyond counting—
we shared books
in our first years of growing up,
ran through rain across the fields,
and were crushed
by the storm of history.
There were days we vowed
to risk our lives for peace,
then took turns going to prison
to witness how fragile
a human fate can be.
Later we wandered from temple to temple
asking the monks about great meanings,
words not yet spoken
though tears had already soaked the sutras.
Holding a bowl of temple porridge,
we felt the weight of a thousand worlds.
We wrote carefully
each ancient character,
searching for the mind of those before us,
so gently, afraid to crack
the soul of ink and paper.
And when I left the country,
I regretted not telling my friend
all that I had understood—
for sometimes, without meaning to,
the heart falls silent
and pockets hold no words.
I have four younger siblings
jobless year-round;
in 2000 they still lived together
sharing a black-and-white TV,
their hands never touching a phone.
Each day they scattered into the streets,
biking from Ch? L?n
to Sài Gòn, to Gia Ð?nh,
sweating as they searched for work.
Sometimes they found a job
for a few weeks,
then came the notice:
“work ended.”
They heard the country was “renewing,”
entering the 21st century,
money flowing freely—
yet every two months
they wrote asking me for help,
not knowing I was here
picking up quarters on the street,
hunched over each day
writing enough lines
to fill a newspaper page,
like old scholars selling calligraphy
during springtime,
often scolded by passersby,
sometimes accused of protesting
in Little Saigon—
a place people say
is where birds find good land.
My siblings’ hair
has begun to turn white,
though to me they remain
as small as long ago,
and my heart still wants
to offer a simple word of guidance—
like giving them a recipe
for instant noodles of wisdom—
but my lips falter
and words no longer come.
My friends’ backs
have begun to bend,
as another friend told me—
still waiting for news from me
as if waiting for a miracle.
Yes, once we believed in miracles,
but I no longer see them
anywhere except our homeland,
where my friends
and my siblings
live each day by miracles—
some days surviving
on air and plain water,
some weeks on coffee
and cigarettes,
some years on nothing
but poetry and a simple heart,
and in that place
we lived an entire lifetime
on tears alone.
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