Now it has swallowed me up to the neck Rendered my long-time weakened limbs and body wholly useless, Transparent, drifting, disappearing into the fog Only my head remains as I try to rise for sporadic gulps of breath before dropping myself down to the bottom
I first saw it when I was 21 years old In the midnight-panic eyes of a man hunted all over his own country as he returned after many tumultuous years That was the shadow of a giant beast pitch-dark and enlarged to the point of suffocation, which shook and laughed savagely One that used to wait in ambush under the eyelids of sick children And for the first time, there, I was shocked to see myself clearly: my feet entirely eaten by transparency
And I rid myself of 21 innocent believing years
On that remote summit of raging wind and fog An ever-believing world having collapsed into a heap of deceitful dust With half a body still bobbing above the fog I held my head up in defiance, threw out my chest and looked down into the deep valley with worn-out sadness Knowing any beginning was already too late for an escape
Down there Under the roof of fog tighly covering one’s head, that nebulous air accumulated for generations Someone like myself In her 7th year, fell unconscious in the yard after inhaling a full load of earth efflux The kind of misty air exuded from a wet crazy satisfaction after days of drying heat and hunger Of an infuriating red color from layers of bruises which kept piling up for ages, the blood of which is seeping and boiling
Someone like myself, a child who many nights screamed uncontrollably in nightmares of running from a herd of thick quivering arms growing out of the fog
Then she nagged, bit her cushion, scratched herself to erase from her young body those dirty marks of violation
Someone who got lost in her vast childhood with her smile confiscated, her call for help muffled, who was silently poisoned here and there in the dense fog which turned ears deaf and eyes blind
Who was flocked by a muscular crowd discharging malignant venoms Someone whose framed picture of youth was torn, slashed into pieces, bitterly nailed inside a room of the vaguest memories
Hungry, thirsty, utterly alone and cold, she wandered on feet exhausted and frozen for many seasons Shivered on a snowy summit Surrounded in a bleached abyss calling her name ceaselessly from somewhere beneath the soles of her feet There, amidst the fog, a remote shelter—a deep tomb was built To where I could drift when exhausted and into which I could pour all my secrets It would be a dark, heavy musical rest symbol dropped silently so no one could find
Down there, dull in the fog Myself and so many human figures transparent, constricted, stupefied Making tangled, broken speech
Wobbly walking down indistinguishable paths Saying always yes, absolute obedience A herd which hid their faces in the fog while fearfully advancing in rhyming sweet odes They never saw themselves, never saw each other, never had relatives, breathed only bitterness
They believed firmly in oracles about the bright and orderly scenes on revolving lanterns, a circling forest of singly-molded mindsets
A feeble herd intoxicated by illusions of paradise, injected with venoms and sucked clean of all vitality in exchange for deceitful dreams
Men soaked in water careening, waiting to fade mid-slope Women livid, dejected, carrying burdens on broken backs
Children—a herd of numb larvae growing up in tight cavities teeming with excrement —birthed in waning light
I grew crazy unable to contain such a thought the first time cradling the child in my arms He struggled and kicked, cried and went blue not wanting to breathe He was bracing against the invasion of fog which thickly polluted the air He grew faint in my arms which were transparent, incapacitated and useless, until he had to surrender “Dear child, we all have to surrender, get used to and try to forget while enduring it And prolonging the flickering of our lives in dim hope”
Could we do anything differently?
When frustrated people who showed disobedience were evaporated overnight as if they never existed Were swallowed whole suddenly by a cluster of thick, dark and stinking fog
Then the bodies of the unfortunate ones would be found without scar When examined, emitting an endless stream of fog We were small, weak and humble We would not be able to carry the harsh and accidentally logical punishments
Like suddenly stabbed to death by a chanting, insane fellow in the streets Or slipping, falling and drowning in the river while sleep-walking at night Or having our cell-mate in his midnight boredom put a nail through our ears Or being freshly slaughtered in a common classic jealousy fight Or hallucinating a killer in pursuit and getting lost forever in the fog of panic We had been figures partly or wholly transparent Drifting in the cold of indifference We are objects useless, formless, controlled, vulnerable What could we do, a throng of hellish troops living cowardly?
Even as a child I was always stiffly afraid of transparent creatures Albeit, in filtering light, they are indeed beautiful spectacles Like the scene of a sea throbbing with jelly-fish, reaching up to drink sunlight, serenely exposing the soft drapery of their bodies with gracefully dexterous tentacles They glided as if there while not there Hovering like ghosts of themselves Wiggling a forest of invisible traps that tied up and broke down other creatures They swam in crowds around our nightmares and constantly laid clouds of festering eggs everywhere like black fog
In my bone-weary escape on dizzying slopes I went astray beyond the door of truth in this country of suffocating fog Swam in search til my breath ran out yet I saw no deities Only a drove of plump worms their furious partying and gleeful game of transmitting oracles via loudspeakers So that was them Who conspired, plotted, incited, tipped off, concealed, lied, hushed up their accomplices for all contemptible deeds Who conjured trash and called up snakes, worms, bugs and maggots to rise into humans Who whispered into ears murderous verbal orders Who wiped dirty hands clean Who turned laughable, stupid stories into stately, elated truths vindicated by shiny and grandiose words Who was the Almighty sitting imposingly somewhere above the sea of fog Who was the one and only sun blazing way too brightly
I am not a leaf sticking my whole life to a tree
I have to run from this area of heavy, idiotic fog Even if what is left of me is just a miserable and frail figure
Even if sometimes the narrow path is surrounded, turned into a sea of fuzzy clouds at the very next bend Each step forward is an exploration entrusted to luck Even if we are born in the middle of an abyss of fog Its slippery walls pull down those who try to crawl up with hopes of escape A murky abyss of boundless black fog and winds laden with cries of grievance Is the underworld of exile in which eternally lost souls wander aimlessly without finding the door of light Another underworld A cauldron boiling so much flesh and bone down in preparation for a bloody feast
Sometimes I think at last I have escaped When the ground sinks and the sky draws higher the twisting road extends towards the sea I cry happily only to curse wildly as I discover countless layers of fog above A thick, black atmosphere of death endlessly spreads In high winds, amidst patches of fog drifting from afar Sometimes the burnt smell of a sunny desert and cracked dry cries under a veiled face At times from the mountains, trails of pure dew crawl down and long like gushing blood carrying the scent of a thousand years snowy summit and green fields Once it is the odor of burning flesh from dried throats and drained eye sockets Many times it is the disgusting smell of living corpses, obese and showing off, promising dangers They, a species of violent and cruel black fog, have joined hands in surrounding and poisoning all humanity with stupidity Claiming their shares on living bodies Forever painting over the same blatant clumsy comedy
I pour all of myself into a secret escape which always reverberates haunting echos:
“Born in the fog, you won’t ever escape the black Fog surrounding your blood, occupying your flesh, infiltrating your breath…”
Even though it has now swallowed me up to my neck Leaving only my head while I try to rise up for sporadic gulps of breath before droppping myself down to the bottom
Just the thought of soaring under a certain patch of translucent tall sky is enough to suffocate me Even though all escapes from fog over so many years have led to the same tragic ending I have to pay with blood, by leaving the abyss
Nowhere to run I land on the edge of the abyss Strain to elevate my child Towards the other side where the sky is clear And begin to stretch, flatten, relentlessly become the runway.
-- Saigon, March 2014
-- Lê Đình Nhất Lang dịch -- photos from the poetry film, Black fog, by Dino Trung