Su Nombre Puede Ponerse En Verso

Because you, President Ho Chi Minh,
poet Ho Chi Minh,
serene Vietnamese peasant Ho Chi Minh,
have seventy-seven years of struggle in a whole life.

And because you have ceased to be everything,
your names, and a voice, a breath, a look,
to be only and nothing less,
than land and blood and bones of the Homeland.

For all these things and many others,
that are difficult to enclose in cages of words,
and because for you the dignity of man is
higher than bread, higher than glory,
higher than survival itself,
Your name Ho Chi Minh can be put in verse.

You can be sung to
as one sings to the sea and the mountains,
because singing to you, president,
poet, peasant,
is singing to the beautiful and tormented land of Vietnam,
which no longer has the shape of the bamboo stick
with a basket at each end,
but the glorious shape of the only door
through which one can enter the world of the future.