Announcing a new bilingual book of poems by Nguyễn Chí Thiện
Hân hạnh giới thiệu tập thơ song ngữ mới của Nguyễn Chí Thiện   
Excellent for ESL Study / Sách hay để học ESL                          
Vietnamese Language / Ngôn Ngữ Việt Nam                              
Vietnamese Literature / Văn Chương Việt Nam                             
Vietnam War (1954-1975) / Chiến Tranh Việt Nam                     
                                                                           
Người đoạt Giải Thi Ca Quốc Tế, 1985                                           
                                                     
Winner of the International Poetry Prize, Rotterdam,  1985
while in solitary darkness at the “Hanoi Hilton” prison           
                                    
                                                                 
                                                                       I Believe
                                                                    I believe in one thing
                                                                                              One essential thing
                                                              That tomorrow the sun will shine     
                                                                   I also think of one thing                
                                                                    One profound thing
                                                              That the dark Communist nights
                                                             Can stretch into several decades   
                                                                  And if so, it will be so sad
                                                              For man only lives for so long!





                                                         

Allies for Freedom, publishers
www.alliesforfreedom.org                                                           
Haiphong, 1959                                                  Berkeley, 2007

In 1961 the young dissident poet

Nguyễn Chí Thiện

was sent to prison by Ho Chi Minh      
because he told a high school history  
class in North Vietnam their textbook  
was written by Russian propagandists.

Denied paper and pen, he emerged in
1977 with 400 poems in his memory,
which he secretly carried to the British
Embassy in Hanoi on July 16, 1979.

Refused asylum, Thien was arrested
outside the gate, he was taken to the
Hanoi Hilton prison, where he began
twelve more years in prison, eight in
solitary darkness.  

But the British diplomats kept their
promise and sent the manuscript to
London.  The poems were published
first by Vietnamese in the USA, earning
both  international renown and
condemnation to his oppressors, the
Communist regime of Vietnam.  

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