GOLDEN TORTOISE, THE

Song of A Grieving Mother

101 Song of A Grieving Mother I love our water buffalo as much as our hut and our vegetable patch as much as your school. I love our rice paddy as much as my husband and my father’s tomb as much as my sleeping mat. I love your father as much as our son. I love our pig though we must eat him. I love our star fruit, jackfruit and mangoes. I love rice whether grass, seed or grain. I love you, my daughter, as my mother loved me. No difference between these; this is que huong. And so, my daughter, you and our country are one and the same, no life without each. And that is why, with a love more than love, I dress you in bombs and kiss you as you leave. DMZ We travel to the old Demilitarized Zone that once separated North and South. We stand on the 17th parallel, once a place of forbidding violence and terror. I climb on the shell of an American M-44 tank standing as a memorial to the feuding past. The open belly of the rusting fire dragon sprouting pink blossoms We travel down the Street Without Joy where in both the French and American Wars thousands of soldiers from every faction slaughtered each other and the civilians without mercy. Rubble of a school— gray-haired classmates toast and vow “friendship forever” ...