The Mekong

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

Legends say that nine dragons
unite their powers
to become the water
of one river

– Cửu Long – the Mekong.

 

I grew up near Bạc Liêu river—
the whisker of one of the dragons —
and I often saw fishermen row wooden sampans
away from the shore,
their fishing nets
blossoming across the water.

Stories about the river
flowed through my life,
men and women
who had died during the war,
whose bodies were stacked up
from one river bank to the other;
stories about how chemicals
sprayed from American airplanes
have seeped into fish, eels, shrimps, water snails
stories of women too sorrowful to live
after their husbands didn’t return from the battlefield,
who chose the water as their graveyard.

But I let the stories flow away. All that stays
are the voices of the children
who used to come every Lunar New Year,
their sampans filled with cumquat trees,
fruit and flowers, their laughter
rising as they jumped into the vastness
of the river’s arms.

I didn’t know how to swim,
though I had let dragonflies
bite my bellybutton,
so I sat on the shore,
watching them swim.

I saw then how the river swelled,
not with memories of the war,
but with the promise of spring
exploding in the laughing red firecrackers
echoing from afar
echoing from afar…