Administrator’s note:

 

Vivianna is a grand daughter of Tho T. Nguyen, a former Vietnamese Air Force fighter pilot.  Tho emigrated to America in 1991 as a refugee after being incarcerated in Communist re-education camp for 10 torturous years.  Vivianna was born in the U.S. and has absolutely no knowledge of the war her grand father had fought in the early nineteen sixties.  When she listened to the song Bonjour Vietnam (Hello Vietnam), she was inspired and wrote a poem “Beauty of a Lost Land” below.

 

Vivianna is a 6^th grader at Arthur RANN, Galloway, NJ. I am proud of her poetical skill and would like to share “Beauty of a Lost Land” to my readers. 

 

Beauty of a Lost Land

By:  Vivianna Nguyen

Age:  12

Grade:  6^th Grade

 

In a world scarred with violence and hate,

I lost my beloved, beautiful land,

That was being played by the cruel hands of fate,

Where everything I knew was turned upside down in their hands.

My eyes have been opened,

Yet I can never forget,

The time the scars have deepened,

When my land was no longer quiet.

I want to know your soul,

The beauty of my Vietnam,

Before the war that stole,

All those lives, both Vietnamese and American.

The helicopters roared,

As the ground went slick with blood.

Airplanes soared,

While gunshots filled the air like a flood.

Many have fled,

As the communists took over,

And many tears have been shed,

As we lost the land we loved forever.

Now it’s in a peaceful state,

However the scars still remain,

Never again will everything be straight,

For the ground is still blood stained.

In that time of war,

The hope never subsided,

But too many have fled too far,

Where the country divided.

I want to know why my hair is black,

I want to know more then the war-bitten stories that have been told,

I want to come back,

I want to know about the beauty in which it holds.

Let me know my origin,

Show me the secrets, and I will learn,

The beauty before the war bit in.

And I promise you that I will return.