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Untitled
By
Tran Thi Thang
(Member of
Vietnam Writer's Association)
If you want
a passionate kiss of love
Kiss my red lips alone.
If you do it with cold indifference,
Kiss a stone.
If you kiss with calculation in mind,
Do it with a computer.
It can help you a lot.
As a girl who knows nothing but love
If I do silly things,
It is not my fault.
Translated by Kim Hoa & Joseph Duemer
Rainstorm-wind and you
By
Xuan Tung
Rain comes
and goes
Without cooling the earth
Unlike the soft swirling mist that soaks gently
And brings the green slowly into leaves.
Wind suddenly passes and perishes
Without changing the trees along the street
After the wind has gone
The heart returns.
Like a thunderstorm
You come and are already gone
Leaving how many wounds in the soul
Summer heat
Winter cold
Rain
Wind
You
Shape the character of nature.
The misty rain like a tired man
Whispering wind slipping past
You whisper to yourself that you have not gone
You whisper to yourself...
After
many missed dates, you finally come
By Hoang
Nhuan Cam
After many
missed dates, you finally come.
Autumn, regrettably, has just passed.
On the table, the purple chrysanthemum
Four withered petals, and three about to fall.
After many missed dates, you finally come
Like the bird's wings in the eye of the horizon.
I grow tired of vague and false words.
Even if our lives were once painful, we must sing.
After much hesitation, you finally say
That doves by nature never die young.
Afraid for so long, I remember now
You are a windstorm from a distant shore.
My heart is a small house
That your wind may enter and, if unsatisfied, leave.
After so many missed dates, you finally stand here,
But the autumn chrysanthemum has taken me away...
1985
Translated by Nguyen Ba Chung,
Nguyen Quang Thieu and Bruce Weigl
Orange in
green skin
By
Xuan Dieu
When Autumn
nears,
I like the scent of the orange's skin,
Still green, on my hand after peeling,
The perfume lingers.
Oh! Yellow flesh is sweet,
And the skin is not in a hurry,
Bitterness breaks in the nose
Like a wave of perfume.
In my youth, out of duty,
I returned from far away
Like Autumn nearing,
Crazy with first love.
My hand is eager,
Across thousands of miles of missing love.
For the excitement of peeling
An orange in green skin.
2/8/1979
Waiting
By Huu
Thinh
I would return to the place called "Eighteen hamlets of
Betel
Gardens"
so many
gardens, so many summers -
she waits,
her face toward the night.
Twenty years
she longed for the sky to darken early; twenty years,
meals gone cold.
The New Year
should not come again and
make my
sister sad;
no one
should congratulate her
on one more
year of life.
My sister is
no longer young, but out of love and respect,
the
villagers call her miss;
out of love
the villagers won't show their children off
before her.
Twenty
years. When my sister climbs on a boat loaded
down with
passengers,
she fears
being drowned while still in her beautiful years. She is
known for her faithfulness;
he is still
alive;
he shields
the lamp to keep it from going out.
Twenty
years, she wears a heavy brocade dress at night, full of
life and waiting, though my brother is unaware.
She is not
like the snake who sheds old skin under
the tree's
shadow.
But without
him, she is always the odd relative at
the
festival.
In the midst
of the family's laughter , she is lonely.
In the cold
night
her one hand
warms the other .
She hears
gun fire from the distant militia post.
At meals she
eats alone.
No matter
where she sits, the scene appears out of balance. She
hides her youth beneath her dimpled cheeks.
She misses
him, longs for him;
she is sad
as the flamboyant flower torn in two.
He is with
those who will never return; he has heard, and
the plants
and grass have heard,
how the
leaves love him. They volunteer to camouflage him,
though they
will never make him as cool as she,
under her
shade,
though they
will never make him as warm as she,
under her
hair.
As alive and
light as this day, as grass in the dry season, her
breath winds its way all through his life.
His bandanna
of a time of tears.
One day it
will wave in front of the verande, a flag of happiness
flying in the wind,
but tonight
she is sad,
the ring
loose around her withered finger
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