A Red Country (poem)

My country’s red, long so I was told

Victories, a star glows

Flag crimson, glorious so

Vanguard leads, the people follow.

.

Red in sight, we have traded lives

Beat armies, lay siege to empires.

Red in mind, we have triumphed fights

Bathed rivals in blood and plight.

.

Why today I see but grey

Of skyscrapers in fatal haze

Of nostalgia from olden days

Of people’s groveling for a pay.

.

Red, they lie, whilst we sell and buy

Whilst at sea our people die.

Set vanguard on fire, compatriot mine

So from black, a rainbow shall rise.

Ngu Thi Yen is a Vietnamese translator and writer working to make anarchist theory more accessible to Vietnamese speakers. He writes to illustrate “the state capitalist reality in Vietnam with a call to action to build a true libertarian society.

“There is a lack of anarchist voices from Vietnam due to state repression and inaccessibility to primary sources. The most prominent Vietnamese voices in both leftist and anarchist spaces are, alarmingly, pro-authoritarian and state-friendly.

“As fellow South East Asian anarchists, libertarian communists and principled workers, it is our duty to call out the Vietnamese state’s for-profit, authoritarian capitalist nature and callous disregard for the workers’ lives.”