Tag: literature

By Lê Vĩnh Tài, translated by Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm   THE HAIKU HAS DOUBLED IN LENGTH   hence she is stuck   as the autumn lay waiting the coming of winter   THOSE ARE THE REASONS   you hate poetry, with the rhymes are thrown around without reason   and not rhythming without reason […]

poetry is like the idea of nothing

reading Vietnamese poetry means National pride, but

By Lê Vĩnh Tài, translated by Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm   if a poem is a piece of garbage then so is she while she covers the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes with expensive powders and creams the poem hid behind its pain the long sleeve used to wipe away the tears behind […]

we’ll return
to sing the song of yesteryear
“to greet each other, with the rave of a sand storm…”

By Lê Vĩnh Tài, translated by Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm   HYPNOTIZING PATRIOTISM   I am one share of all, and I am myself (to fixation)   I am a glimpse in the mirror I am a covert plan a mantra of fate locked up inside a metal safe of the soul   but you […]

INEBRIATED POETRY IS ALWAYS WAKING UP LATE

the old
often are stricken with senility
loneliness

By Lê Vĩnh Tài, translated by Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm   1. days when it rained misty without end the ashes flew light witches nothing means anything impoverishment stays up late   mornings waking to the stove’s smoke mother leaned her back on the smell of the dark smells of charcoal smells of steamed rice […]

no, I shall never be able to touch you

lying isn’t love
nor lying ever be as clouds are in the sky
as the past could ever be a lie

don’t tell me
women are blind 
of beauty
in the dark

rain
 
though the clouds
signalled your disappearance
into a cloud of melancholy

poverty
it’s black
hence it never wants to fade away
in your mind, it will be with you forever

this world is a cave
she checks the dictionary
the word cave is hang động

By Lê Vĩnh Tài, translated by Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm   I saw that he sleeps inside a woman but he’s not her husband   I saw the children he buried but he’s not their father   I saw him destroyed homes and he’s not a builder   he appears at night he also appears […]