Vietnam Classic

The Vietnam classic
                   was a seventy-year-old child,
with the face of a tired, wise turtle.
Not from his own extraordinary fame
did he suffer,
              but from the fact
                               that he was in fear
of the behavior of a red-haired tomcat
that followed after us with an ulterior motive.
The cat reclined on a bookshelf,
choosing a volume of Saint-John Perse as his mat.
The Vietnam classic kept a wary eye
when he tossed three pepper pods on a saucer,
though cats--
             when sitting half-starved--
won’t eat, perhaps, only peppers.
A prose writer,
               but, in essence, a poet,
though afraid of not entertaining,
                          as one should--
the classic never once fell to complaining
that
    there wasn’t a spare crust in the house.
He poured a drop of whiskey in a glass of water,
and over an alcohol-lamp,
                         with a rolling laugh,
heated small pieces of cuttlefish--
a dried delicacy of war.
In him was the striking,
                        deeply moving,
spiritual staying power of a Buddhist,
and on a bicyclist’s trouser leg
was a forgotten clothespin.
Dismissing with a hand the flames of battle,
he spoke of Bo Tzu-i,
                     Baudelaire,
and I thought:
              "What could be meaner--
than to destroy such a man!"
And fear
        pierced through,
                  broke through,
                            burned through me:
the tomcat
          made a jump
                     from the bookshelf.
Burning hunger had flared up in him.
The cat landed near a bottle
and snatched a piece of cuttlefish in his teeth
right from my fork.
The host in Vietnamese screamed:
                                "Scat!"
and, dismayed by the tactless act,
spread his hands,
                 visibly afraid,
that I will consider it all unseemly.
I took the cat joylessly in my arms.
The cat himself was none too joyful about the theft,
and I froze with numbness,
                          when
suddenly I sensed:
                  he weighed nothing.
A red-haired bit of nature and a warm grain of sand,
trying to arch his back like a wheel,
he was weightless in my palms,
like the fluff of a poplar.
"Forgive me..."--
                 sadly glimmered in his pupils.
And nothing--
             I say in all conscience--
did I ever hold in my hands heavier
than the weight of that terrifying weightlessness.

1972
Hanoi
Translated by Albert C. Todd