oppressed dreams

Like a glass of toast tonight,
The spring follows your feet, running over each sleepy flight of the staircase.
There sounds in me gently the colored clothes of winter coming
My love, you are as indifferent as a thin wisp of smoke still floating infirmly in the frenzied sky.

Open your eyes from today, the past withdraws into warm blankets and clothes.
Though tomorrow the moon and stars might complete their wandering cycle,
Bend your shoulders to lull your child whispering, whispering in tears of self-pity,
There is me quickly crossing my life; there is the kerchief wiping out all the passions of the dreaming world.

You are tiresome like a cloud;
Raise up our souls from the cliffs,
The perilous cliffs over neglected love
There is me embracing you, hearing the intimacy fleeing

Come back, come back
Like the last time running away from the lowly life
Like greedy days with short and long breaths
Like love evaporating in salt water.

All my life I am quieter than a river
Like an areca tree shooting up into the mistaken immature sky
It was dream like a dried river and worn out stone
In the stretching dawn, being lopped like smoke

I have a lot in my hands
I have a lot on my feet
The buds never coming out from the hard shells
From comatose sounds on other lips
I suddenly see you singing very strangely, with joy

Come back, my love, come back,
As lovingly as the last time you left
Like on kissing lips, hearing the flowing along farewell
Like on my proud shoulders, more strong than an erect rock

From your laughter now as soft as the grass
There is former spring still running proundly, despite its slavery
I suddenly recognize you,
See you from the slope of wide earth

It has begun today
It has begun tomorrow
It has been melancholic on every sorrowful welcome
I have seen, have seen,
when waving each to each in suffering smiling lips

Original title: Tu Nhung Day Doa Mong
From: "Binh Minh Cam" (Shrouded Dawn)
A collection of poetry written in 1975
published in 1985.