(Quế Dương là con trai của nhà thơ Quan Dương)
MY FATHER, SOLDIER AND POET
by Que Duong
My father is a soldier and a poet—
a man of war, a maker of words.
His hands have written love into paper,
soft lines, gentle strokes—
the same hands that have gripped a sword,
lifted, struck.
His verses bloom like wildflowers,
but their roots tangle in blood.
Can a man carve beauty and still destroy it?
Can he cradle both the meadow and the flame?
I have never seen him cry.
Not when he lost his country
not when his firstborn faded into silence.
Did his grief spill into ink instead—
pressed between lines I will never understand?
He wields his words like a blade,
sharp, precise—
yet I wonder,
does he ever mistake one for the other?
He says there is honor in fighting for his country,
but I wonder—
where does honor go
when the battlefield is silent,
when the wind whispers through the empty fields,
when the pen is heavier than the blade?
And if a man never weeps,
where does the sorrow go?
Does it sink into the steel,
hollowing him from within?
Does it bleed into his words,
until even his poetry tastes of war?
And I wonder,
if I read his words long enough,
will I finally hear his sorrow?
Or was it never meant to be found…
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4T Trần Thị Thanh Tùng (cựu nữ sinh Nữ Trung Học Nha Trang) phổ nhạc. với tiếng hát của cháu gái, thế hệ thứ 3:
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