The Right to Live in Peace
I am teaching a HSC student about Ho Chi Minh. On reviewing the atrocities on both sides, I can only have contempt for the left/right spectrum of autocratic politics, when one can imagine other directionalities and transversal connections and movement dynamic of politics.
Nevertheless, the universal romanticism of this old Marxist song gives me a lump in my proletarian throat every time.
The Right to Live in Peace
Poet Ho Chi Minh,
who strikes out from Vietnam
to all of Humanity
No cannons will ever erase
the furrows of your rice fields,
the right to live in peace
IndoChina is the place
beyond the wide sea
where flowers burst open
with genocide and napalm
The moon is an explosion
that melts all the clamour,
the right to live in peace
(instrumental then second verse repeated)
Uncle Ho, our song is a fire of pure love
it is the dove in its dove house
olive tree in the olive grove -
It's the universal song
of chains that will be broken
The right to live in peace...
(Loose translation by Arielito of El Derecho de Vivir en Paz by Victor Jara)
No cannons will ever erase
the furrows of your rice fields,
the right to live in peace
IndoChina is the place
beyond the wide sea
where flowers burst open
with genocide and napalm
The moon is an explosion
that melts all the clamour,
the right to live in peace
(instrumental then second verse repeated)
Uncle Ho, our song is a fire of pure love
it is the dove in its dove house
olive tree in the olive grove -
It's the universal song
of chains that will be broken
The right to live in peace...
(Loose translation by Arielito of El Derecho de Vivir en Paz by Victor Jara)
