Your name, Ho Chi Minh

Because you, President Ho Chi Minh,
poet Ho Chi Minh,
quiet Vietnamese farmer, Ho Chi Minh,
have spent seventy-seven years in struggle,
your whole life,
because you have given up being
all your names,
a voice, a breath, a glance,
to be only, and nothing less than
the earth, blood and bones of your homeland,
because of all these things,
and many others which cannot be
imprisoned in cages of words,
and because for you the dignity of man is
more important than bread,
more important than glory,
more important than one’s own survival,
your name Ho Chi Minh
can be put into verse.

Poets can sing to you
as one sings to the sea, and to the mountains,
because to sing to you, President,
poet, farmer,
is to sing to the beautiful and tormented
land of Vietnam
that no longer has the shape of a bamboo pole
with a basket on either end,
but the glorious shape of the only door
through which one can enter the future.