BITTER POTION

(For Ngọc Trâm)

As fever is burning you on its pyre

I become ash too

The bitter potion cannot wait any more

Holding your hand

                             I pour

My grief into the empty bowl...

O’ daughter! As the mist falls

My hardship arches across the cold night

For frail flowers

To give off scent needs bitter roots.

Sweat becomes callused hands

Spring pours into the medicine bowl

My old age weeps with mute tears

While truth bursts out for no reason.

I wonder what you eat in your dreams

I put the bowl on the window

When you grow up to my age now

At the bottom of the bowl

There may still be a storm.

THE SONG OF HARVEST

Spreading quickly, overwhelming reclaimed virgin land

You drop one burst of wild flower after another

to whirl me up from the house with its small garden

The birds cut up immense space and leave lines of endless flight

My roots reach up to your verdant eyes

Every sprout sprays warmth to wet the bosom of earth

from the breathing that transforms the sky

from the empty sky that builds clouds up

The thatch eyes burn up the old crop

To change our vision and the vacant horizon

The earth accepts all burning cinders

The new season comes with self-confidence, grinding and wiping out all

The kiss is silent, radiating heat and boring into entrails of earth

touching underground veins swollen with old mysteries

The fertile earth fused with dawn offers up a face

with exuberant plants and trees in profusion

The seasons of resurrection are pregnant with ripe ears of paddy

The thunder bursts out in the palm seeds

The cycle of fresh alluvium embraces fibres of earth

You bow down and all of a sudden, the river rushes in.

(Translated byv Nhat-Lang Le. Edited by Susan Blanshard)