On Sharing A Husband
Screw the fate that makes you share a man.
One cuddles under cotton blankets; the other's cold.
Every now and then, well, maybe or maybe not,once or twice a month, oh, it's like nothing.
You try to stick to it like a fly on ricebut the rice is rotten. You slave like the maid,but without pay. If I had known how it would goI think I would have lived alone.
Note:
Ho Xuan Huong, like her mother, was a vo le, a concubine, or wife of second rank.
Traditionally,
Vietnamese women wielded considerable economic and political power, but by 1800 the condition of women had deteriorated as the Vietnamese nation itself began a collapse under domestic and foreign pressures.
Many women could choose only between struggling alone or becoming concubines, risking the indignities in this poem.
Men, meanwhile, could have many wives.
The king was permitted 126 wives iin six different categories, while even a student scholar could have "five concubines, seven wives." See Hoa Bang,
Ho Xuan Huong,
Nha Tho Cach Mang (Saigon:
Gon Phuong, 1950), p. 106.
Chem cha ("screw") is a curse, meaning "cut father." Nam thi muoi hoa ("five out of ten times") is a folk expression.
Ho Xuan Huong
Other author posts
Day and Night
Peekaboo we used to play;my hands covered my face,your hands covered your face,incredible, there we were gone That is what we play now, yourhands on my face and my handson your eyes Incrediblehow we disappear into each other
Spring-Watching Pavilion
A gentle spring evening arrivesairily, unclouded by worldly dust Three times the bell tolls echoes like a wave We see heaven upside-down in sad puddles Love's vast sea cannot be emptied
To A Couple Of Students Who Were Teasing Her
Where are you going, my dear little greenhorns Here, I'll teach you how to turn a verse or two Young drones sucking at withered flowers, Little goats brushing horns against a fence
Weaving at Night
Lampwick turned up, the room glows white The looms moves easily all night longas feet work and push below Nimbly the shuttle flies in and out,wide or narrow, big or small, sliding in snug Long or short, it glides out smoothly
