Only The Heart

I was going through some old emails, and came across this gem of a poem I had read and fallen in love with eight years ago.

Note from the person who had sent me this poem: This poem is from Only The Heart by a writer called Brian Caswell. It is about Vietnamese refugees during that war and the troubles that they had and their search for freedom. This poem is in the Prologue and it was written by a poet called Thahn Tran.

Only the river knows
How it feels to flow
How it feels
To roll and boil and tumble over falls.
And go
Where no man tells you
Where to walk
Where to stand
How to feel.
Only the river knows these things...
And only the prisoner knows
The dream of freedom on his tongue.
Sweet foretaste of the summer wind
That blows
Across the waving green of the young rice,
Across the unchained current of the distant stream
Between the singing strands
Of taut stretched barrier-wire,
To speak the future freely
In guarded whispers.
Only the prisoner knows these things...
But only the heart knows
The song that has no words
To limit harmony.
The song that scorns despair, and blends for melodies.
The crash of rolling breakers dying,
And the silence of sap,
Rising in the trunks of ancient trees,
And the laughter of the children,
And the crying,
And the savour/fear of unexploded dreams.
Only the heart knows these things.
Only the heart sings...