Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Poetic Obituaries: The poems were under his shirt, 400 of them.

The date was July 16th 1979, just two days--he noted it--after the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. Freedom day. He ran through the gate of the British embassy in Hanoi, past the guard, demanding to see the ambassador. The guard couldn't stop him. In the reception area, a few Vietnamese were sitting at a table. He fought them off, and crashed the table over. In a cloakroom nearby, an English girl was doing her hair; she dropped her comb in terror. The noise brought three Englishmen out, and he thrust his sheaf of poems at one of them. Then, calm again, he let himself be arrested.

from The Economist: Nguyen Chi Thien

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