Vườn trưa (Midday Garden) - cô Cẩm Lai (1942)

Tầng cao nắng đốt vàng nguyên
At higher levels sunlight burns golden
Cho vàng tưới rội khắp miền tràn lan
Makes gold pour through every realm, far and wide
Vườn trưa lặn ngập trong vàng
Garden, midday, submerged in gold
Làm duyên lẳng lặng đôi hàng cau tơ.
Brings a quiet charm to the row of young betel palms
Hướng dương say nắng ngẩn ngơ
Sunflowers in a daze bask in the light
Lâng lâng đôi cánh dật tờ bướm bay.
Serenely a pair of butterfly wings flutter.
Trời trong chẳng gợn làn mây,
Sky, clear, not even a hint of clouds
Gió không giễu cợt hàng cây rủ buồn.

The breeze does not perturb the row of sagging trees.

nguồn: Tri Tân tạp chí #55 (21 tháng 7 1942)

Translating poetry (and song lyrics) is a hobby for me. With Google translate it's almost unnecessary. The AI comes very close to capturing the meaning. Here's Google:

The sun shines brightly on the high branches, casting a golden glow.

Gold pours down, spreading across the land.

The midday garden is bathed in gold.

The rows of young betel nut trees add a touch of charm.

The sunflowers are dazed by the sun.

Their wings flutter like butterflies.

The sky is clear, without a single cloud.

The wind doesn't mock the sad, drooping trees.

Even if AI can make a decent translation, it does me good to wrestle with word choice and meaning, so I am happy to put in the effort of my own translation.  This poem was published in a bi-weekly cultural magazine Tri Tân which means something like "Know The New." "Cô" means Miss, making it clear to the readers of that moment that the poem's author was a woman.

She wrote her poem in the traditional six-eight (lục bát) form - couplets of six and eight syllables. The sixth syllable of the first line passes and rhyme down to the sixth syllable of the second line. The eight line of the second line passes a rhyme to the sixth syllable of the third line, which in turn passed to the fourth line, etc...

Her poem was later anthologized on pages 1375-1376 of the volume Thơ Mới: 1932.1945: Tác giả và tác phẩm (Hà Nội: Nxb Hội Nhà Văn, 1999), an indispensable book in my library. The anthology gives the poetess's full name as Lê Thị Cẩm Lai, born in 1923 in the village of Đại Nài, in the Thạch Hà district of Hà Tĩnh province (Vietnamese northern central region). The only other biography given here is: "Từ sau 1945 là cán bộ phụ nữ" - "From after 1945 was a woman cadre." Checking online, we can learn that she passed away in 2006, was a communist party member, and subsequently wrote a great deal more poetry.

Vietnamese poetry, especially from that time, frequently evokes nature, often as a barometer for one's own feelings. Unlike much poetry of that time, the poetess here seems to be feeling pretty good. Sometimes the sun in Vietnam can feel too powerful, even oppressive. Here it brightens and enlivens a scene. Perhaps this was at her own home in Đại Nài village? (which today has been absorded in the city of Hà Tĩnh and is called phường Đại Nài).

nguồn ảnh: báo Bình Định, trích từ báo Kinh tế Saigon online