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THE WRITERS POST (ISSN: 1527-5467) VOLUME 11 NUMBER 1 JAN 2009 |
NGUYEN PHAN THINH __________________________________________ a
poem by NGUYEN
PHAN THINH translated by Phan Tan Hai A Stranger i am naïve, live like an idiot, sway my legs out
of the bridge, lower my head
to watch the flowing river, and
raise my head to watch the floating
cloud. and they see me listen
vaguely the wind -- hum and hum
in the ears, hum and hum in the head,
hum and hum nigh and day, hum and
hum fretfully, unendingly. i hazily sit, i fuzzily fly and i
clumsily cry inside while facing
all the pained, the shadowed, the
benumbed – so tragic is the life. all are mad,
all are ruined, and all are
stinks. thus i ‘ fly beneath the stars,
and i fly alone while my heart
breaks and nobody knows. i sit and
swing my bare legs out of the
bridge, while people go back and
forth busily, acting as worker bees
daily in an artificial beehive for life. i fly with the
cloud, flow with the river, and float
alone into the vast ocean, and
i suffer that nobody shares
a love and a belief. i am
lonely,
fly calmly over the
abstract and metaphysical death,
and always feel naïve or insane
just like a stranger in my
hometown. how could i live indifferently
in life with those who
are so unrighteous and so uncompassionate
that trees are growing
upside down and that worms and
bugs are becoming gods. ‰ The Writers Post &
literature-in-translation, founded 1999,
based in the US. Copyright © Phan Tan Hai & The Writers Post 2009. Nothing in this magazine may be downloaded, distributed, or reproduced without the permission of the author/ translator/ artist/ The Writers Post/ and Wordbridge magazine. Creating links to place The Writers Post or any of its pages within other framesets or in other documents is copyright violation, and is not permitted. |
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