GOLDEN TORTOISE, THE

Hue Symphony

97 Again I visit the Thien Mu Pagoda, home of the Celestial Lady, training school of both the priest who died and the one who lives for peace. I lead my veterans in a prayer and healing circle under a wood-beamed roof occupied by a large statue of Buddha. I know that Buddha is compassionate, but seek to understand how he can be portrayed as fat and happy when there is so much sorrow. In the Pagoda “Please, Golden Buddha, tell me how you smile and laugh while your children fry?” “My children at play greet you. Warblers in my Bo tree sing.” Hue is voluptuous, vibrant, hot, sweet, passionate, refined. Hue blossoms and inspires. Though we drenched it in bombs, its beauty is eternally fertile. Hue Symphony I sit behind a hedge of purple morning glories blaring their trumpet faces to the river. Below me pink lotuses, whose chorus first sounded with the budding orange ball of eastern sun, are closed and resting now. Their long stems hold high their thick closed buds like horn masters standing at random proud attention. From the arbor above, lavender orchids tumble on vines and chains longer than I am tall. Their links of soft petals float on a breeze only they feel that does not cut the steady beat of blazing heat wrapping tall palms in silent measures of devoted passion. Between the flowering vines black bees longer and thicker than fingers plucking a moon-zither 98 The Golden Tortoise dance with a quiet buzz that melds with the heat as they penetrate each blossom with a promise of honey and sweet life. Just as I think this symphony of flowers is complete and interrupt my heated trance with the tympanic crash of clicking pen, the final coda floats across this scented river by my side— a fisherman’s flute notes skim the silent ripples like pebbles of sound flicked by the wrist of the eternal child emperor who has lived and played here for as long as the river bends. R With 2½ million dead from the American War alone, tombs in Viet Nam sprout like rice. Many are in large military cemeteries for Northern and Viet Cong dead only; none for the dead of the Southern Army. These cemeteries contain central patriotic statues in socialist realism style accompanied by a motto declaring, “The Motherland Honors Your Sacrifice.” Countless other tombs are in small family or village plots where war dead are buried along with ancestors honored for four generations, a full century. Viet Nam is not only overpopulated with the dead. While the United States still has about 2,000 Missing in Action, Viet Nam has ¼ million. In ancient Vietnamese belief, if a person dies violently or without leaving children to remember them, the soul becomes trapped, wandering in this world and unable to continue its journey toward reincarnation. A wandering soul is called co hon. Peasants report seeing and hearing wandering souls gather to lament in jungle valleys and riverbeds. The 15th day of the seventh lunar month is the Day of Wandering Souls. It is a time,18th century poet Nguyen Du wrote, when “rain falls like a ceaseless weeping… and pear trees scatter their tears like dew, their dew like tears.” The Vietnamese say that the full moon is crying. On this national holiday people tend uncared-for graves all over the country, leaving porridge or bean and lentil cookies for the homeless souls to eat. Whether lost at sea, on a long journey, or missing in action, when families accept that their loved one is dead but the body will not be recovered, they build a Ma Gio, a Windy Tomb. This is an empty tomb that serves as home and altar for the wandering soul to find rest among his relations. My friend Song’s family has built two such tombs. ...