After just one year, Diệm forced the emperor into exile,
Sending all the French troops back to the West.
He named himself the anointed president, ruling from the clouds,
While Uncle Hồ ruled the North with an iron hand.
However, Mother’s life was still marred by misfortune.
Peace was short-lived; within a few years, it faded away.
“Go South!” Uncle Hồ ordered his weary troops.
“Liberate the South — unite the country at any price.”
My Northern children endured scant rations of food and clothing.
By nightfall, Uncle Hồ reminded them
to watch one another with a spying eye.
The Southern children learned to help and protect one another,
waiting for weekends to play soccer
or watch movies.
Diệm refused to carry out a national referendum,
because the agreement had been made
between France and Hồ Chí Minh.
And since Diệm had already sent the French
back to the West,
a general election for the whole country
became meaningless.
The United States supported Ngô Đình Diệm’s objection,
provided that Diệm could contain the Vietnamese communists.
But to Diệm, worshiping Jesus was more important.
Thus Buddhists were treated as heretics.
Down in the Mekong Delta, his elder brother Thục helped,
promising land reform rights to sway the rice farmers.
Converting to Catholicism meant putting rice on their tables.
Rice would be stockpiled,
and every province was promised a church.
But Diệm turned a blind eye to a brother gone astray,
The Cần Lao Party and its secret police
swept through the nights with merciless arrests.
People trembled in the darkness of the Central lands —
how could one man hold so many lives in his hands?
Ngô Đình Cẩn, Diệm’s younger brother, ruled through fear.
The people whispered his name:
the Lord of the Central Region.
No office required, no assembly convened.
Cẩn’s orders outweighed even his brother’s.
The Cần Lao secret police listened for every breath —
doors stayed shut,
mouths dared not speak.
Huế lived under constant terror.
Buddhists were arrested.
Temples surrounded.
Thiên Mụ Pagoda’s bell
rang into silence.
Sông Hương and Núi Ngự
quietly wept.
The Buddhist faith was suppressed across the nation.
Resentment followed the secret police everywhere.
Mother ached as her children were crushed
in the name of order, authority, and God —
how unjust.
After Diệm and Nhu fell to the generals’ bullets,
Cẩn knew his own end had arrived.
Those generals who had once been loyal
to the Diệm family
killed Cẩn as well —
cutting loose all ties.
The lord was dead, yet the people found no breath.
Old wounds still bled beneath the skin.
Mother learned another lesson of history:
Blind power
is a form of suicide
in disguise.
Thích Quảng Đức’s self-immolation for the Dharma
offered his body
to transform injustice.
The flames stirred the conscience of the Americans
and consumed a regime
that had lost its people.