THE SIX-YEAR-OLD GIRL

                    I

The six-year-old girl
drifted lonely looking for food.
Her dad had paid his “blood debt” –
a “village bully” by the “Peasants’ Union” subdued.
Her mom had left her behind helpless,
to flee to the South, the Party to elude.

Since she was just born,
fed with mother’s milk, sleeping in cozy bed,
clothed with flowered soft shirts,
she had not noticed such happiness instead.

While the movement was launched to its height,
who would think of an unfortunate fate?
But, between humans and humans
there always is compassion to demonstrate.

Then, there was an indigent old man
who groped for crabs to live from day to day
that happened to meet the puny kid
whose parents had parted for far, far-away.
He suddenly felt pity for the orphan
and shared with her his scant chow.
With limbs scraggy like sticks,
belly being bulgy, neck bent as to bow,
and eyes round and red-rimmed,
she diffidently stared at passers-by to slur:
“Give me some gruel, madam!
A little rice, please, sir!”

                        II

There was a female cadre
while mobilizing the hamlet’s mass to compete
unexpectedly heard the lost cry;
she looked towards the street
and shuddered to remember
the famine in the far-off year – who believes?
She, just only five years old,
had to lick the cake-wrapping leaves
in the market, then ran to the alley
to lead the poor young kid home all right
and snapped giving her a half,
the handful of rice spared overnight.

The poorest-peasant key activist
turned her head, tears starting to her eyes:
– “Although being a landlord’s child,
she is too young to know what horrifies.
That time I gave her a bowl of gruel;
I was therefore put to the rack for three days.”

The team’s leader then stepped back
to contemplate the orphan in various ways,
trying to look for any certain enemy‘s track,
but found only a human, truly.

The child having been fed
lay down on the ground and slept fully.
She dreamt, “Our babies in the future
should be embraced and breast-fed duly.”

                          III

Her assignment was to be dismissed
because her acting so had been caught.
She lit the dim lamp in the cold night
to write her self-criticism report.

Because of the boneless tongue
that is not steel but it cuts as in an abattoir;
because of the dim-sighted
that cannot see horizons broad and far;
because of the lazy brain
that is all rusty like a corroded iron bar
for long years sleeping soundly
on the classic pages of hatred promoting art;
because of the robotic bodies
full of tendons but lacking a heart.

                          IV

Well, “Connected with reactionaries!”
“Off one’s political standpoint guard!”
She cried many nights continuously.
The oil lamp was so hazy and hard.
She asked herself and retorted:
“Why have pity on a foe’s child though fair?
Were I able to hate the kid
How would I have been free from care!”

English version by 

THANH THANH LÊ XUÂN NHUẬN

VVM.29.02.2024.