In The Name Of Poetry
Binh Tam ( Pham Van Binh)
1. My Former Lover’s Fragrance
My former lover, I completely don’t know
When your fragrance has penetrated into my soul
Though you are living far from me at the horizon
Though time is as long as a human life, it is still at hold !
My soul together with the fragrance
Of a lassie in the innocent time
Have experienced numberless dense forests and long rivers
And lots of ups and down full of bitterness in life…
The love fragrance remains for a long time on the lips
The virgin fragrance spreads in me ardently
I, like a yellow butterfly,
Keep flying after the former fragrance passionately…
Clouds drift in the wind sluggishly
Water hyacinth drifts slowly in water flow under the bridge
Life drifts in our mutual nostalgia
But why have we forgotten a sentence of date ?
My hair is now as white as silks
But I don’t know where you are waiting for me nowaday ?
So that my restless nostalgia
Is rushing at my heart when becoming thousands of waves !
2. An Amorous Incarnation
Coming into being from the primitive age
I am now living in the world insignificant and humble
Why is the obsessive love still being nursed in my heart
When benevolence and righteousness have drifted away like water ?
Deeply wallowing in the floating life
I have to carry the love karma on my shoulders
In the wind resounding like a long moan
Where will my amorous incarnation go now, my lover ?
Looking up at the silvery moon above my head
I have a pity on you who has to be a daughter-in-law in a strange place
Your life is quite the same as the drifting water hyacinth
Confined when no waves appear but drifting about when waves are arising…
My lover, if the path of love were wide and smooth
I wouldn’t have been in ups and downs until the presence
With the whole life of embracing a lovesick dream
With the whole life of embracing a dream of expectation…
*
Oh, I have to come back to the original primitive time
So that I can return my complicated human incarnation to this life…
3. A Poet’s Soul
When one’s soul turns into a poet’s
He is not himself any longer
Then the moon silhouette in water is as unreal as his marriage
And the wind and clouds are far way like his lover…
Considering Muse as his sweetheart
He foolishly goes to look for her
But Muse is originally unrealistic
So that he becomes a vagabond forever…
*
When one’s soul turns into a poet’s
He is not himself any longer
Then he thinks he is still ageless
Though he is really getting much older…
Lightning stars as if they were candles and lanterns
He goes to search Muse in his heart
But he just sees a moon of illusion
So that in this incarnation his life gets hard…
*
When one’s soul turns into a poet’s
His body contains millions of lives
The joys and sorrows in his little heart
Are collected from lots of human beings at any time…
When one’s soul turns into a poet’s
His shoulders carry hundred thousands of lives
The human beings’ innermost feelings he takes
And becomes a stroller for the humankind…
4. The Lovers’ Day
My darling, love is God’s gift
Sent to human beings only
Which is as wonderful as a magic
Helping us fly up to the sky easily…
*
Today is the Lovers’ Day
People offer one another words of love
Full of flower fragrance and taste of honey
As the same as the original though after thousands of years, my sweetheart…
Some courting couples living thousands of miles far from one another
Have had a mutual longing until the mountain rock is worn away by their standing
Today, a good luck to them, God offers
They are so happy that their faces blush in their meeting…
Some courting couples are, for one hundred years, living in separation
Their lovesickness to one another has faded away their incarnations
Today God offers them bonds of love
They are so moved that in the meeting their tears have fallen…
*
My dear, love is happiness as you see
Retaining us in this world really
If love flies away one day
Be collapsed, this human beings’ land may…
5. Human Beings’ Land
Is life a sea of miseries
Spent for human beings, my honey
So that when born on Earth
We all discharged cries out of our bodies?
Is life a land of happiness
Spent for human beings, my sweet
So that when we leave this location
People cry to see us to Heaven?
Life is really a sea of miseries
Torturing us under waves of hardships and difficulties
How miserable the human beings are, my sweet
When we are drifting everywhere like duckweeds…
Life is also a land of happiness
When the honey of love penetrates our hearts, my sweet
In joys and cheers, our souls can fly
Even gods and fairies have to thirstily put us in sight…
*
The human beings’ land is full of miseries
But also full of joys, my honey
So that nobody wants to die
Though he leads a beggar’s life…
AUTHOR
Author Binh Tam (his real full name is Pham Van Binh) 
was born in 1952 in Thai Binh province, graduating from Ha Noi Institute of Foreign Languages, the Department of English in 1977. He has a number of poems published in magazines and newspapers such as Cua Bien magazine (Hai Phong Literature – Art Association), Ha Long newspaper (Quang Ninh Literature – Art Association), Hai Phong Sunday Newspaper, Kritya – an Indian international journal of poetry, the Platform – a literature magazine from West Bengal, India ect. He is also the translator of the poetic collection “Dreaming in another land” composed by the Indian poet Rati Saxena and the literary review book “Decoding hidden face flower” written by the Indian Literary Doctor Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya from English into Vietnamese.
His poetic collection “Binh Tam’s Poems – published in the papers and magazines at home and abroad” was published in 2020.
His poetic collection “Binh Tam’s Poems ” was published in 2023.