1

The Vietnamese Sequence

By Ian Irvine (Hobson) copyright 2007-2013 all rights reserved.

All images, except images of Vietnamese stamps,

photographed by the author 2007.

[Mercurius Publishing (Bendigo,

Australia)]

Acknowledgements

'If you Eat a Pomegranate', 'Hospital Cave

and the Superpower' and 'Soft Breeze of a

Temporal Implosion' all appeared in

Mascara (Australia/ South East Asia),

Edition 3, January, 2008.

‘Proud Tilt of the Masses’, appeared in

Verandah 23, (Australia), August 2008.

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Contents: The Vietnamese

Sequence

1. Words Against the Enormity of Silence

2. Stirring the Coffee in Hanoi

3. The Under Thirties of Hanoi

4. The American Tourist

5. My Great Grandmother and Coral for the Fish-Tank

6. Aboard the Vietnamese Tourist Junk

7. The Golden-Headed Langur

8. Hospital Cave and the Superpower

9. Proud Tilt of the Masses

10. Uncle Ho Concentrates on the White Ball

11. Achtung Baby

12. Of Phosphor, Skin, Muscle and Bone

13. Thoughts on the Shore of Luu Khiem Lake

14. The French Gave Emperor Tu Duc a Clock

15. A Glint of Golden Scales

16. The Moon over Hoi An

17. The Foreign Poet Eats an Accidental Poem

18. Heavy with the Fruit of This World/This Life

19. Soft Breeze of a Temporal Implosion

20. Fear of Flying

21. If You Eat a Pomegranate

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Words Against the Enormity

of Silence (for T.T.)

The right to be melancholy

is not easily earned

whether at home, among futurist machinery

of progress

or here, among the urban

rhythms of modern Vietnam.

Let us reaffirm the

Revolution of Grief, however

deep the pool of sorrow

however problematic

the interior world that stumbles

across memories—trap-doors that yawn

to gaping caverns of

the forbidden.

This freedom to scan the deep-image thicket

of childhood and youth, via

vortex or assembled objects, to approach

underworld (with charge of severance)

body armour or primal

pool of pain

a precious gift, an

antidote, I pray

to all-comers

smug in agreed upon

realities of eternal Herculean

optimism.

I read your words, I wish them

to immunise the world!

And because I was

a young child

freshly arrived from a green land

shrouded in smoke of industry

and wilting in the Australian heat of

1971,

4

I cannot ever know

your grief, and thus

only in words and images

of words do I even begin to

approach the traumas of your becoming.

Against such an enormous breakdown

of all the codes of civility

they were busy teaching us back then

in Australian primary schools

I am struck dumb, nauseous

among the craters still

of the DMZ.

Nothing more I dare to ask

no right to prod wounds decades old

BUT

their devils marshalled with un-dead thirst

stuff-things rising from Karma soil, to automate

the American alliance—an almost annual

phenomenon—

and doing it again, grand and unconscious:

Destroyers of the world soul.

It all suggests an elaborate primal scene—

souls geared

to the computer rhythms

of a new world

ordered puritanical enslaved

to pornographic guilt-image

and souped up with missiles

and parasite networks of surveillance—

voyeuristic and depleted.

After Ginsberg we know it begins and ends

with this censorship

of the interior

murmur/Howl

and though we poets no longer

direct the traffic

we are skilled at planning

new roads

in among the unexploded ordinance

and everywhere ruins

though always the risk of

5

‘Jumping Jack’ mines

Your courage to honour

the dead (and elsewhere dying)—

a life on the front-line.

6

Stirring the Coffee in Hanoi

After the airport soldierly heat,

and the schooling motobikes in dialectic

smog, beeping each other, avoiding the docile

mother fish of bus and car, we walked

to the lake of Hoan Kiem – observed

the golden tortoise burdened with sword

among the starred hats on red substance

and clear as equatorial sunshine at $2.50 US.

This morning the dragon fruit, red and

all reverse night sky on the innards

appeared for breakfast, next plate the

soup, noodles and tofu with little

gulps of chicken – my daughter is

sampling everything slowly – no

school on Monday.

We took our lives

to the waters last night crossing

Dinh Tien Hoang, a veritable tidle

wave of traffic, awash to the sidewalks:

‘No sudden movements, and they’ll veer

safely around you. Trust. A metaphor

for the entire country!’ Says the American

mopping his brow.

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The jet-lag is minimal, the resume

ridiculous, outside the hazed-up sunset

really matters, and this two-pronged

power plug makes me nervous. The

chord is frayed almost to exposed

wires. Nevertheless, it boils the

water efficiently enough and even this

three in one concoction of packet

will taste great – I

know it will.

8

The Under Thirties of Hanoi

The young adults

among the ancient gardens

and mythological tombs

were born in the 1980s.

Their cameras, their clustered

smiles, leaning in, snapping pictures

with mobile phones,

the young men too, in among

the thick-trunked trees and bonsai

seeded when—during the American war?

Shy but effusive, pinching cheek, patting head

cooing and sighing, thinking about their

lover, real or imagined, and leaning

to touch soft texture of child hair

‘She beautiful!’ they say, ‘Kum ern’

we say. Thankyou. ‘He handsome!’

they say, ‘Kum ern’, we say.

Thankyou until it

feels like a mantra, a

thanksgiving.

Thankyou!

And Confucious

in the temple

opposite.

9

The American Tourist

In among the stream of motorbikes

as if some apparition from the

grave, or the future – I swear

I don’t hear him coming, though

the bike is jet and ocean

roar – the trim taut American

in khaki shorts and black

t-shirt revs down the locals

full throttle and dark shades.

The street is narrow and clogged

with early evening being, I flinch –

children stray close to the

gutters. An old Vietnamese

snorts once, gestures sullen

to his wife perplexed. She’s seated

at the rear of the shop.

Did she hear

the explosion

on the street?

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My Grandmother and Coral

for the Fish Tank

Christmas pudding karsts slide by

at last, a space to breathe after

mandatory nesting—

seven years too close to

the model father Brady.

What’s required in the years that remain:

the courage to report

this world

this life.

Expat since 1971—but

bluestone farmhouse, green

field of pig or cow and

hillside of autumnal forest—the

memory stuff, never quite recedes. Like

my grandmother’s mind at 92, one third

of absence in a legendary

continent.

I feel the rawness

of my mother’s distance

this year more than ever.

Acceptance finalised—three days ago on Catbah

Island. A kind of exile. The

old British soldier, returned from

collecting coral, tanned and healthy

said, over dinner: ‘Five years I stayed,

after all the travel. … Depressed. I hated the

damn place! Sold my hotel near Manchester—

all that tax and regulation. Came

here. Here I want to get up

in the morning.

Then this morning: News from Home

(the vast Southern land)

fascists with guns and

uniforms rounded up the natives

in nightmare replay (blood and poison) of

1788. Their bureaucratic implements

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not that different

to the wooden slave frames

used by the French—you can look

at the photographs

in the Revolutionary Museum. Then followed

the Japanese and the famine, next

the Americans and the bombs

and poisons.

Australia, my on again, off again

lover

my despair,

my shame by association—an

exile of a different order (truly from

what should amount to paradise).

This life, this world and that

Vietnamese activist’s typewriter

circa the 1930s

right there in the museum

making me think about my brother

the unionist

and my Scottish great grandmother

her politics, her photograph

her fierce protectiveness of kin.

Tonight the urge to give myself

again and again

to the world. This

fortunate space to breathe. But words

trail off into primary needs—slogans

and clichés—though still relevant

to the deeper living truth. It

goes like this:

There is time and

a glimmer of safe-gap

in the lesser hell

to oppose

parasitic authority. Though

suffering bulges, still

we are committed.

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13

Aboard the Vietnamese

Tourist Junk

Two young gun lawyers and

their girlfriends aboard the Vietnamese junk.

On day two as we enter the international

shipping lanes by kayak we discover

we have nothing in common but

their US dollars. They’re nice enough

in sandals negotiating

coral and low tide rockery—protecting the

hull—and discretely taking photos of

our kids like parents to be. Open enough to

cuteness and awe of karst and vast eroded

limestone cave at dusk, with tree

that came alive with shadow

of snake slither and bats’ squeaking

overhead.

But I wonder:

How many months, or even years,

on travel’s hard road, local boats that

creak to the edge of sinking,

destination uncertain; 7 dollar hotels

with unhygienic water and rats

close to ear and ankle; bimo terminals

with thieves feather-fingered espousing a

religion of a sorts

just like these

young Americans, still converting

the natives in 2007—over trade deals

and plans for new resorts.

God and money firmly set

in young and concrete

minds.

14

The Golden-Headed Langue

On Cat Ba Island

rare monkeys—fuzzy

balls of golden hair, and

big, big eyes

like my son.

All this way to

appreciate.

15

Hospital Cave and the

Superpower

The old man is 76 years old

still wears the khaki hat and shirt

of the North Vietnamese army.

He lives less than a kilometre

from the place that defined

his life. He’s

fit and stout and funny—not at all

like the devil promised us by LBJ. Carries a

flashlight and knows

every inch of this

underground labyrinth.

During the war hundreds of people—

soldiers, surgeons and peasants—

took shelter in this cave. These days

it’s deserted, just damp concrete

floors and walls beneath

an eroded lime-rock ceiling.

When the Americans bombed and

bombed the island the locals

would crowd in here:

what

did it feel like

waiting for the superpower?

He shows us the ‘reception’

the doctors’ sleeping quarters

the medical rooms proper to the left and

right of a long corridor, until we arrive

at the ‘lunch-room’. Here

he drops his flashlight, introduces

himself again in Vietnamese

and asks (commands) us to sing

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“Vietnam—Ho Chi Minh”

“Vietnam—Ho Chi Minh”

He lets me record the performance

and suddenly

all the war before me, cold chills:

tonnes and tonnes of bombs,

Agent Orange, vast networks of tunnels

in the South, the Tet Offensive, the

fall of Saigon.

I’ve met some Aussie Vets

seen them join the Anzac day throng

still tentative—as young boys

they met their reality principle

in quiet Vietnamese determined to

end colonialism once and for all.

Here, just 70 miles from the Chinese border,

I begin to understand.

The digital video is blurry in the cave

(all sorts of shadows)

as the tourists sing and clap (nervously) the echoes

are immense, like 1969, like 200 people

singing, like injured peasants, like jets

prowling the paradise skies—and before us

this old soldier

like a phantom,

38 years among ghosts.

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Proud Tilt of the Masses

Off the street today

a small album of Vietnamese stamps

—100,000 dong, or

“Seven dollars US, sir”.

It reads like official history

but is much more

colourful.

For a few years the peasants,

trades-people, nurses and conscript

soldiers got a good run in

Vietnam’s philatelic record.

They appeared in groups, heads

tilted proudly, the tallest soldier or

bureaucrat or worker at the rear,

and always

shoulder to shoulder with

male and female comrades.

And gainfully employed—

dressed to realize the material dreams

of their soviet educated elite.

The symbolism?

all for an independent Vietnam.

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Like the man in overalls on this 1976 stamp—

a nearby office worker (cadre) seems neither

superior nor inferior—though history announces

a future of vast corruption,

stifled democracy

and greedy elites (kept afloat

by foreign investment).

These days the late century

switch-over

from Communist to

Neo-Conservative dictatorship

acknowledged by all

but the editors of Nhan Dan.

At what cost did the workers

tilt their heads in the paper-thin air

of so much postage? Always fixated

on a map of reunification,

an image of Ho Chi Minh

or that Yellow Star on a Red background

(like the t-shirt I bought)

and Lenin (thankfully, rarely Stalin).

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In the days

before the Chinese invasion

the hammer and sickle functioned

as a semiotic foundation—

or should we say watermark?—

giving legal tender to a regime

(intent on invading Cambodia).

The old soldiers who run the government

justify much with history. They

have known B52s and unimaginable

hardship and loss. They are not easy

to dismiss as the country lurches

toward Adam Smith, tabloid papers,

and the internet—if only to feed

the thirty percent still malnourished

after decades of victorious living.

I peruse the semiotic favourites —factories and

machinery, military hardware, bundles

(or full baskets) of freshly harvested

fruits and vegetables—

a philatelic cornucopia for a people

wracked by starvation.

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And industrious men with hard hats—

though the ethic of safety

absent

among the country’s millions

of motorbike riders

Go-getter stamps! Hammers poised to

bash nails into communal constructions,

and women tending noisy machines, as

farmers work idyllic rice paddies

(though the taxes and kick-backs

are harsh and random like

colonial oppression).

All this industry is tiring! Thankfully

the humble water-buffalo

features often.

So much for the stamps of the subsidy economy.

By the late eighties native flowers, fish, birds,

insects and animals began to reappear,

likewise—away from paper—traditional

Vietnamese cooking.

Soon after—a final irony—

alongside the flora and fauna, we note

resurrected scholars and military leaders

(so much history)—at least

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this new nationalism is mostly indigenous,

(though tinged with China).

After contemplation, these

paper signifiers

accurate enough—

a mandarin is

a mandarin after all,

regardless

of the changed

dress code.

22

Uncle Ho Concentrates on the

White Ball

The day belongs to Confucious,

Lenin and Uncle Ho—they are

everywhere dead among the petrol fumes

and beggars, the post-card girls and purveyors

of idols and vegetables—more omniscient even

than the multi-national billboards and

yellow-brick embassies. Though we saw no

US fast food outlets today one wonders:

How long before the diabetic onslaught?

In the temple of literature I

longed for a doctoral tortoise with

academic slab (suitably engraved).

Gave my ‘wish-dong’ to Confucious and

the sages of the inner sanctum. He

struck me dizzy with incense,

‘How intimate these scholar gods.’

The space so human, like entering

a friendly guesthouse, the bonsai

old and moss-covered, grotesque

in a familiar sort of way, These ancient

spirits almost rotted down:

Gods of Vegetation.

Uncle Ho’s Mausoleum seemed vast

and uninviting—all that distance between

the people’s entrance and the encounter

with mortality. Lenin on the other hand,

big and bronze colored, shaded by

tall trees, seemed overbearing

but approachable

Until I saw that set of post-cards:

“President Ho Chi Minh with sport and

gymnastic activities”. I paid the 15,000 dong

and perused the collection: Ho on horseback;

Ho with dumbbells; Ho swimming in a rubber

inner tube; Ho with a paddle; Ho with

a billiard cue, and so on.

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If I squinted when I looked

at Ho doing weights

he resembled

Confucious.

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Achtung baby

In the CD shops or on the street or

attached to bikes—burnt out

superstars of yesteryear mix it

with just discovered superstars of today,

and mix it with Vietnamese songsters

for 10,000 dong a CD (that’s less

than $1 US).

I’m sure the agents of these

progressive world-savers, or

their publishing company reps., are hard

at it to halt this piracy! After

all artists deserve due ... etc. etc.

And this represents a kind of theft … of course.

And the US and UK are tandem

cultural hegemonists,

‘enjoying the fruits’, etc.

Like the chic international models

that flicker the hotel

breakfast atmosphere, or the

European soccer stars paid ... well

to speak it is obscene. But

they all choose a non-contentious cause

or two or three

part of the Western super-star

protocol.

Even so, I feel a poet’s twinge

of guilt—think:

If this were global

there’d be fewer Hollywood

blockbusters, and MTV all the

leaner in its sampled, commodified

drummed up celebrity.

No great loss. The profound

narcissism of the West.

And besides an alternative

guilt: this street vendor on

a dollar a day may not

eat tonight unless I buy

that copy of Achtung Baby.

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I hope

Bono will understand, after all

I bought it on tape

in the early 90s.

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Of Phosphor, Skin, Muscle

and Bone

You sense the

rot, but fail to put words

until the stats and the mood at dusk

among coconut and coffee, jack fruit

and pineapple, mango and endless

rice fields dotted by so many

look-a-like graves

all across the DMZ.

Only last night after reading A People’s

History of the Vietnam War you

woke up angry and frightened, realised

that apparently trivial ‘policy decisions’

in parliaments like yours, can protect or condemn

millions in countries

like this, or Iraq.

And thus cynicism and apathy,

lay or academic, no longer excusable

become in the mooned-up dimness

a luxury for those complicit,

whether doling it on $220 a week

or living high and indifferent

on $1,000.

Last night you dreamt of B52 bombers

and mined jungle paths, jets

strafing the fleeing occupants

of schools and lepers’ hospitals, and

agents that burn skin and muscle

direct to the bone—melting cheek and

neck ‘til dripping onto chest.

And in the dream’s starkness

pilots and soldiers sing macabre rhymes

about abuse to cadavers—gotta

frighten up the ‘Boots’ just enough

to do the killing when the time,

inevitably, comes.

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All this an acid bath to

so many lame words and

astute ‘observations’ from

‘educated’ commentators who

never risked minefield or

high tech bomber. Such talk

grotesque against the enormous

madness of the Great Powers

toying with each other

at the edges of their

‘Spheres of Influence.’

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Thoughts on the Shore of Luu Khiem Lake I A journey by boat, painted and chugging diesel,

along the Perfume River—somewhere in the

hills the last Emperors sleep. Next

by motorbike along narrow lanes, past

leisurely villages, then straight ahead

at the bamboo bridge.

Soon enough we halt between

two small ponds – the one to our left

fed by a clear stream, the other

announces the tomb of Thieu Tri, last

Nguyen Emperor before the coming

of the French. And beauty-clogged—

a sea of flowering lotuses.

The children liked his elephants and horses.

I prefer the massive scholar’s stele

it’s up a shabby flight of stairs in a

small building to the left of the

main complex.

Mandarins and bureaucrats—hats military

square or administrative round, and sceptered

or sworded—observe our approach. Tri

told the Catholic missionaries to

hold their horses of the Apocalypse.

Enough provocation for the French

to seize all of Indochina, though

patient enough.

II

But we are not done with frangipani

and pine trees, gnarled bonsai, steles

and picaresque islands at the centre

of meditative lakes and ponds.

The bikers, who speak very little English,

lead us on, to the tomb

of the playboy poet Emperor Tu Duc.

Saigon fell in 1859 and Hanoi in 1872. After that

Tu Duc, lame in the centre, infertile and

preferring the Empress, his 104 wives

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and numerous concubines, sat back

while the peasants built his funeral city to

culmination, exhausted and underpaid. Sure, it is

poetic and visionary enough, like

a bright bloated star just prior

to implosion.

In 1873 in the pavilion by the pond—poetry,

sex and the occasional splash

of overfed carp among lotus plants

three feet high. I linger here

something very Buddhist and Taoist

about the scene—though government

in those days was all about Confucious.

III

We’ve made our ascent to the temple

where they still worship this peasant flogger

alongside his taller Empress wife.

He was under five feet tall.

Mixed feelings – and some amusement -

to save his ego the Stone Mandarins

in the guard of honour

were chiseled very short indeed—they

look like dwarf lords and I’m reminded

of Lord of the Rings.

The real difficulty in among

all this peace, is that

though he wrote poetry, I

cannot forgive him

for the two hundred servants

who are rumored to have

‘followed’ him to his grave.

After all, in 1883

they gave him a decent burial

only weeks before the French

took Hue.

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The French Gave Emperor Tu

Duc a Clock

It all comes down

to a garden

without clocks. So

arranged as to make

you forget time.

It’s working, I’m

not even anxious

about the visa

renewal date.

Perhaps it’s the

forest of young pine

or the aroma of

pacifying frangipani

or the potted bonsai,

gnarled but flowering,

seemingly centuries

old.

Or perhaps it’s

the lotus pond,

mirror still, or

the old statutes

of soldiers and scholars

facing an abandoned

tomb, quiet

as the years

that built it.

31

A Glint of Golden Scales

Another day of golden scales—

a carp-shaped wooden gong

and

a carp-shaped rainwater spout

and small ponds

bright with their presence.

All these golden fish

in the temples and pagodas

of Hoi An!

Where I come from

the fertile carp is not

appreciated. Destroys the habitat

of native fish—makes

murky their river system.

But here in Vietnam

they’re much loved—at home

with the lotus in the

necessary mud of

existence. And

what promise!—

such a gleam

of transcendence!

As a child I loved

carp, they always

gave of their bodies

when no other fish would bight.

I’ve never lost my affection, and

so fitting here their association

with patience and stillness—the

the alchemy of lead

and gold.

After all these years

the pleasure, once again,

of celebrating

the Royal Carp!

32

The Moon Over Hoi An

A full moon partially obscured

by light clouds. We walk

the old part of the town

and the kids discuss Harry Potter.

After all, the streets are narrow

and haunted as colonialism—and

the lighting is dim, as if

to conserve magic. The result

is an excess of shadow, but

offset by brilliant patches of colour

Like this street of lanterns

after the workaday corner—we’re

blinded, startled by

glorious throng of colour!

and suddenly the entire town

uncanny.

Did I mention the river? that

universe of floating candles,

and snatches of music

from across the bridge (as if through a mist).

Meanwhile, tourists eat paradise in clattering

Restaurants—watch gigantic swans

paddle the river, the mist, the river

of stars—and reflections of moon.

After dinner, the moon is brighter,

unimpeded by mist. And

we walk to our lodgings past

the stone dogs and stone monkeys

of the old Japanese bridge—so

dim inside—and they’re

treasured with offerings—

seem to blink as

we pass.

“Quick kids—

before they come to life!”

33

The Foreign Poet Eats an

Accidental Poem

As I recall we’d eaten

the fish and had turned

as best we could—given the need to

translate, and slowly for minds

electric—to Heidegger and

Dostoyevsky, Chinese philosophy

and the occasional ‘Cheers!’

and tinkling of glasses—mine

containing only orange juice

after a night of stomach cramps

and the rest.

The novelist was quoting Dostoyevsky

(or was it Tolstoy) something I agreed with:

writers should serve the oppressed.

In my

side vision.

something green and local—

in my left hand—from the salad dish. I

turned to the translator who made

clearer the quote. Simultaneous

I sampled, chewed upon

the vegetable, listened.

Next came embarrassing dragon

breathe, throat burn, sweat

and scorched tongue of

accidental chilli. The congregation

of writers concerned.

To conceal my suffering I

gulped orange juice but this

was no ordinary chilli, burned on

in my upper palate, pairing

gum from teeth, watering eyes

and fizzing nose. My hosts

signalled warm water which I

gulped without etiquette all the time

dabbing eyes and brow with napkins.

34

Later, less red in the jowls,

I said to the translator—

an English teacher with laughing

eyes—‘Now I am ready for poetry!’

Thao, who has seen every shade of light

and dark, smiled casually

snapped down on what was left of

his chilli—then chewed slowly

painless.

‘He can eat them raw,’

she said quietly in English.

That moment a temporal abyss—

one hundred and seventy years

of tragedy.

35

Heavy with the Fruit of This

World/This Life

Tonight,

just South of

the Chinese border

a thousand poems

rush to be born.

Innumerable fish

attack the bait.

So many nuggets at

sunset after heavy

rain.

The stomach

is full, but the uneaten

food looks exquisite.

Fruits of the

summer,

gleam

against a backdrop

of dense forest.

36

Soft Breeze of a Temporal

Implosion

After the bus trip:

light-green peaks, rice

plateaus and quiet water

buffalo.

As good a place as any

to reconstruct the countries

of the past.

And there is nothing generalist

about the H’mong children

dancing the narrow street below,

or

the German tourists, pleasantly

drunk on the hotel’s upper

floor.

We’re sandwiched,

as always,

between the present

and the impalpability of memory—

I muse:

Indonesia 1994:

3,300 rupee to the dollar.

Vietnam 2007:

16,000 dong to the dollar.

This impulse to quantify comforts

the illusion of time

as something solid.

Like the Dao coin I wear as

a necklace, the seller said ‘1820, Sir.’

Its shape is strange, like

a man without arms, ‘an ancient

unit of exchange’ before the

coming of the French.

The guide whispered:

37

‘A fake.’ But the shape

and the smooth-rust brown surface,

are all that matter to me

at four dollars US.

And the practicalities of spirit—

those women at the pagoda.

At the entrance—

dark rocks and lush

miniature trees.

Inside—

incense-drenched fruit,

a giant cauldron-urn, and

just above the entrance—

multicoloured lanterns.

They loaded us up with free fruit

and hugged our children.

Such calmness

like the men in the white-domed mosques of Java—

bowing, praying whilst

out on the street,

similar densities of

do-it-yourself technology.

I was thirty then, musical, reciprocating

love—and we’re still together

walking the town of Sapa,

negotiating maps, as always

will to will,

appreciating the flower-banked

lake, exchanging gifts, raving

about the view, caressing

and enjoying the local food.

A pleasant time-warp, like a lost map

to an old intensity of being

Making love in a grass hut in

central Sumatra—her soft

tanned skin, our

mutual freedom.

And then the day with icing:

as if outside time, and

abnegating the difficulties

38

of culture shock,

our daughter

her first poem.

39

Fear of Flying

Best to face the phobia here,

now at 39,000 feet. It’s –54 degrees Fahrenheit

outside (what’s that in Celsius?) and the

plane is fish-tailing on high altitude

equatorial winds. They add 200km per hour

to the forward impetus of metal—so

says the in-flight monitor.

We’ve just left the coast of Java,

maybe it’s the childhood murmur

of nothing one could expect, a long

stomach churning journey to the

great southern continent. Grounded

a very long way from two brothers,

three grandparents,

and numerous aunts, uncles

and treasured cousins.

Change has always been grievous.

Perhaps it’s the shock of life in the

low GNP economies of Vietnam, Indonesia,

and Nepal. Among the rice paddies and the

homeless, Australian trivialities perish

like so many fumigated insects—so

many comforts to ignorance. Yes,

none of this is easy—this forced vision

of what really matters in life.

These thoughts as the jet

strikes turbulence and the

seat belt sign flashes

red as emergency.

A working class boy grown

to manhood is not used to the

responsibility of wealth. But there’s

no getting away from the fact

that this plane ticket cost

16,000,000 dong … (though

I’m thinking more about the

7,000,000 dong travel insurance right

now as clear air turbulence makes me

elevator nauseous).

40

Put it this way: you can buy

a can of fizzy drink for

5,000 dong, that’s 40 cents

Australian; Music CDs are 70cents;

DVDs 1 dollar; a t-shirt 3 dollars and

a bowl of steamed rice (Vietnamese staple)

is 15 cents on the street.

Local factory workers earn

$50 US per week (and

$3,000 per year is the average

Wage) … and the baggage lockers

above my head are creaking violently

as out the window to my right

huge spirals of storm-cloud

obscure an otherwise spectacular

sunset.

A Vietnamese novelist asked me:

How can you be a poet and be so

rich? The question took me by surprise,

after all ‘the accident of currency

markets’. But he was serious and I

curbed an impulse to deny

the undeniable—after all I’d

flown into Danang and

who but the meg-rich

fly in Vietnam?

We have hit calmer air—

a concerned hostess hands me a towel

I mop brow and sweaty palm and

tell myself: Good, don’t get comfortable—

the situation on the ground

is desperate for millions.

Think:

This life what it is.

The question:

What will you do

with your privilege?

41

If You Eat a Pomegranate

If, after eating a pomegranate underground,

you manage to return to the surface

it is said that you will have acquired

the ability to see ghosts.

Perhaps I’ve consumed such a fruit

by accident. Things have been strange

for over a month now—began with my

memories of that sunrise crossing

the DMZ:

The sun coming up

and all those people on the roads

in the rice paddies, or hanging around

the gravestones or houses.

I’m no longer certain who was alive

and who was dead. As though

another layer of memory—repressed

at the time—has invaded

the ‘realism’ of what I

thought I remembered.

The problem: supposing all memory

collapses like this? What

will stop this tendency invading my

day time consciousness?

And the train,

as I recall it now, moving slowly,

far too slowly

along the tracks,

as though the dead

had engineered some kind of

deceleration—so I could see them,

so I could begin to hear them speak.

Though for the moment

the protection of glass

remains.

Who knows where this is headed.

It is said that a spell three times spoken—

especially if by the caster, the

42

recipient, and an unbiased intermediary—

is certain to work.

Leaning forward across the table

he asked me something in Vietnamese:

Why do you think I continue

to write poetry

at my age?

Despite clear translation

I had no answer, said:

I don’t know your work

well enough to say.

Eventually he replied in Vietnamese—and

after this was translated, I heard:

For those who are unable to speak

But she wished for further clarity, said:

He says he writes for those

who have no voice … who are

no longer with us.

Startled, I asked—

as though struggling to avoid phantoms—

For those who died—for the dead?

She nodded, said:

Yes, for the dead.

the table went

very quiet.

43

Author Bio (as at April 2013)

Dr. Ian Irvine (Hobson) is an Australian-based poet/lyricist, writer and non-fiction writer. His work has featured in publications as diverse as Humanitas (USA), The Antigonish Review (Canada), Tears in the Fence (UK), Linq (Australia) and Takahe (NZ), as well as in a number of Australian national poetry anthologies: Best Australian Poems 2005 (Black Ink Books) and Agenda: ‘Australian Edition’, 2005. Ian is the

author of three books and co-editor of three journals. He currently teaches in the Professional Writing and Editing program at BRIT (Bendigo, Australia) as well as in the same program at Victoria University, St. Albans, Melbourne. He has also taught history and

social theory at La Trobe University (Bendigo, Australia) and holds a PhD for his work on creative, normative and dysfunctional forms of alienation and morbid ennui.