Being Vietnamese

Hundreds of eggs from our mother, Âu Cơ*,
the eggs of the universe
that one day hatch into us.
We are soaked with a sunrise of green lotus.
Our mother sings us the thousand-year-old lullaby
in Vietnamese.

The white rice from the delta of our labors feeds us.
Our hair flies with the free wings of storks.
We collect rice straws to cushion our sleep,
our journey long, our dreams still alive.

We harvest the season of ripe sun.
The Mekong Delta tilts its shore.
The immense Trường Sơn range lifts up our voices.
The Red River silkens our lives.

We have crossed the glorious cities,
Paris of light or ancient London.
Our souls still drift back to our harbor
where our mother’s lullabies sing out,
back to the temple roof, curved like the crescent moon.
Riverbanks silky with ancient songs,
The fragrance of fresh rice straw along country roads
adorns our memory.

Old bamboo groves make us young again,
back to the human waterfall, surging to all directions,
flowing nonstop with the blood of Lạc Hồng.
Whose dreams have drained the Eastern Sea dry?

We are the people, the thousand rivers of Việt Nam.
Through rough water and huddles we still flow back
to the heart of our sea,

to the golden rice fields,
to the bamboo groves that tilt the afternoon,
to the shore that tilts the moon.

And all of this we call Motherland,

a Motherland sacred with the colors of Việt Nam
that rise to faraway shores.

Through Narrow Lane

I wait for the sun to swallow my thoughts whole,
for the moon to light on my palm.

We make our way through a narrow lane,
try and fit our bodies perfectly into each other in the darkness,
try and fit our lips perfectly into each other to carry us through the winter.
My scarf wraps around the wind; I wrap around you.

Inside of night the sun flows; inside of day, the moon.
You flow inside of me,
and swallow all my thoughts whole.
You put the moon into my palm.

I open my eyes after the kiss;
we’ve passed together through the narrow lane.

Freeing Myself

One day the wind lifts me high,
so I look down and see an ant imprisoned in an e-mail inbox,

in a mobile phone, ringing from time to time.

One day the wind lifts me high,
so I look down and see a bird imprisoned in the praises of his flock,
in the limits of a sense of beauty, prearranged.

One day the wind lifts me high;
the wind hands me a pair of wings
and tells me to free myself from wings and
fly above my thoughts.

The White Sky

I pick up my pen,
not yet writing,
the pages already full of the words of others.

I close my eyes,
not yet dreaming, night
already smeared with the dreams of others.

From beyond the pages, cries of suffering
from where unfairness coolly patrols.

I kneel under the rain,

confess under the white sky.

Grass

The fragrance of the bodies of mowed grass
fills the air.
No smell is sweeter than the wounds of grass,

a fragrance that lays me down to love
earth’s surface, imprinted with uneven patches.
Velvet grass grows into peace.

I dissolve into your color,
the speechless color of grass.

From the Deep Earth

The day you arrived, the world knew how to breathe,
earthworms suddenly knew how to sing,
and the earth’s surface trembled with life.

My mother had kept my embryo inside for days and months
where I wriggled, the world too small.
I howl inside my own hoarse voice.

Wind blows me into your hands, so I feel the pain pierce my fingers and toes.

Your gaze opens the sky.
The sun rises and forgets to set.
You place me on your lips and on your chest.

Our hands join to make a universe for the moon, the sun, the mountains
and the vast singing sea.

Into your heart love gives birth to me,
and your voice breathes
streams of joyful thoughts
into my blood.

You will be soil and I will be soil, dissolved into each other, quietly one day,
conceiving earthworms who know how to sing
the eternal song of emerald grass.

Night’s Whispers

You are sleeping
and night rests its shadow on your arms.
Moonlight tenderly hums;
the wind tells of peaceful seasons.

Stars dream in your eyes.
The galaxy sends clouds to safeguard you.

I will come, and I will be the tender grass,
spreading myself to sing you to sleep,
and I will grow myself into you, making us one.

The Music of Fire

Moonlight gleamed
to flood the soaked grassland.
From the garden of legends came dewy breath
swelling the forbidden fruit.

Light extinguished.
Your voice lit up a fire in search of me.
Millions of fingers wove,
lifting me up.
Our music found voice on a piano.
My hair became the black and white keys
for your hands to call me, call me.

Shooting stars appeared
where fires burned rivers into my breasts.

Your Words

Your words are clouds
to rain down on the furrows of my skin,
eight-color flowers, flying and growing

I have touched the sunrise with my hair,
soaked sunset with my tears,
still,
I cannot emerge from the earth
until the eight-color rainbow
blossoms,

on the body of a field, gold with wild daises,
to color me with your words.
Eight wings of the rainbow fly up,

calling a name.
The sound rolls into my chest,
leaving my lips tattooed.

The Green Sphere

I did not know there was such a river,
so fast running and passionate;
river who arrives at me
after so many winding mountains and whirlpools.
The river that pulls me into his freshwater arms,

the river that silts me with his pain, lifts me with his gentleness.

Oh my river,
I did not know I was the rice field during drought
until the river brought the song of joyful water,
from far away, flooding me with possibility,
so I may die, flowing into him.

Song of Garbage

When the city sinks deep into its sleep,
the world of garbage bursts into life.

Vegetables who can’t rot through their formaldehyde skins wail.
Babies aborted from their mothers’ wombs
compete their voices with those of insects.
Liquor bottles
swear in their drunken language.

Manuscripts shout at each other in jealousy.
Promises torn to pieces, still preach loudly.

There are women who sit in the city’s garbage dump
to gather, collect, and mend their lives whole from debris.