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THE WRITERS POST
(ISSN: 1527-5467)
the magazine of
Literature & Literature-in-translation.
VOLUME 5 NUMBER 1
JAN 2003
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LUAN HOAN
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Washing my wife's clothes
(translated by Huynh Sanh Thong)
Detergent's mixed
with pinches of my love -
I wring it
gently, lest give you pain
The cloth still sweetly smell of your own
skin -
my hands, as if caresssing you, feel shy.
The water in the bowl is muddy brown
I feel so moved by all these specks of dirt.
There are th hardships you must bear alone
To feed
your man, your children, mouth by mouth.
Water soaks
through each biber of the cloth
To flow and
reach the bottom of my heart.
Dear, do
you see the quiet tears that drop
and in the fabric merge with tender
thoughts?
Now, in
my forties, I learn how to wash
and thus
spend some of all my iddle hours
Should I, a man who's lost
his fatherland,
stay tied
down here and just complain or whine?
The world's
left me without a foothold here -
but why
remain forever of no use?
Well, I
wash clothes, make poems, read the news -
Meanwhile
around the clock I dream and dream ...
LUAN HOAN
· THE WRITERS POST (ISSN: 1527-5467),
the magazine of Literature & Literature-in-translation.
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