Hai Phan Poet Free verse

Farewell to Khanh Truong: Walk On as in a Fairy Tale

By Phan Tan Hai

Keep your heart truly joyful as you depart.
The final page of Hop Luu Magazine has now closed.
Your hand has released the pen and the brush.
You have lain down after a lifetime of wandering.
Rest your head upon the shelves of memory.
It is time to let everything go,
to see your life drifting along the river of words
where you wrote down the finest things of our generation.

Keep your heart truly joyful as you depart.
Life is always a series of departures.
There is nothing in this world for you to regret.
You wrung the blood from your own heart
to make pigment for your paintings
and ink for your pages.
There lived your dream of love and reconciliation,
your innocent artist’s spirit offered freely to the world.

Keep your heart truly joyful as you depart.
Lay your head into sleep after thousands of days
creating for life.
Let go—there is nothing left to hold.
Sail with your dream like a wind-filled sail
toward the great ocean.
There—where rivers meet,
where east, west, south, and north converge,
where water becomes one pure joy of merging.
Tomorrow and all the days after
will no longer resemble the roughness of the past.

Keep your heart truly joyful as you depart.
The history that swept you and me along
has always held mysteries no one can fathom,
yet our generation lived with a painful compassion.
Tears from thousands of sleepless days
were written onto the pages.
There is nothing to reread.
Nothing to look back upon.
For after Hop Luu,
people will no longer think as they once did.

Keep your heart truly joyful as you depart.
The blood in our hearts has already been poured out for life.
History is a ceaseless current,
and each of us, and everyone in this world,
has been part of that flow.
We sat writing by candlelight in the night,
hoping the next generation would see
a sun of love rising,
where no one would question yesterday’s darkness.

Keep your heart truly joyful as you depart.
We too have done clumsy things,
full of mistakes,
beside our compassion and our hopes.
What has happened can no longer be held.
It is time to see your life drifting into the past,
where all joys and sorrows, gains and losses dissolve.
With a heart deeply loving this world,
you have done all the beautiful things you could.

Keep your heart truly joyful as you depart.
You became a bridge crossing many dividing rivers.
You stood amid hailstorms
and teased me when I said
that in the scriptures, hail turns into flower rain.
Yes, that is a fairy tale.
And you and I, and so many artists,
stepped out into those hailstorms
to tell fairy tales to our people.

Keep your heart truly joyful as you depart.
Walk on as in a fairy tale.

♡Like0

Share Poem

---

Post Comments

Poetrysoup is an environment of encouragement and growth so only provide specific positive comments that indicate what you appreciate about the poem. Negative comments will result your account being banned.

Please Login to post a comment