The Hand, by Pham Ho^

The day he was to leave,

he clasped his son with both his hands:

one held the boy, the other stroked his cheeks.

The child was still so young,

a fragile sprout of life

amid a village wreathed in smoke from bombs.

When he bent down and kissed the child,

his cheeks smelled of sweet milk

and of gun powder, too.

“My son, your dad must go to war.

At home stay healthy and grow up.”

The boy blinked both his eyes and smiled,

his dimpled cheeks like two young moons.

Now peace.

He’s now back in his village home.

To hold his child he only has one hand--

the hand that stroked the cheeks

is here no more.

His body, briefly, tilts aside:

for the first time, he misses it, the hand.

Suddenly his cheek feels cool, magically cool:

the child’s small hand has just stroked it.

He looks at it, the pretty hand,

so round and white and pure.

It smells of flowers and of fruits--

life’s fragrance has dispelled the stench of death.

The child’s small hand,

close up against his cheek,

laid skin to skin, becomes a part of him,

transfusion of the sap of youth.

He feels he’s not lost it, his hand.

From “An Anthology of Vietnamese Poems: From the Eleventh through the Twentieth Centuries,” edited and translated by Huynh Sanh Th^o^ng. (Yale University Press: $35; 429 pp.) Copyright 1996 Reprinted by permission.