Tĩnh Thất

______________________

Tác Phẩm Mới

Hermitage and Meditation
2000 2001

1.
Please give me a grain of salt and pepper.
In the lingering golden sunset, your young lips turn paler.
I am on my journey to rebuild my country.
The red light fell on rocks and the mist shrouded my city.

Oct. 20

2.
Is it a horse at an amble coming up?
Or a horse at a gallop going away?
On your eyelashes, a light layer of green moss still stays.

3.
A thousand years ago, up the mountain I climbed.
I’ll go down the stairs in a thousand years’ time.
I have been waiting for you in vain with my eyes wide open like mustard seeds.
Where are the footprints left behind by your feet?

4.
If the iron is not entering this soul of mine,
Who else is more deeply plunged into sorrow than I?
Man is not leaving at all.
Then, why the mountains and rivers have to answer the go away call?
The fragile sunray erodes the doorframe
to let sorrow whitewash the eyelashes on your eyes so strained.
I climbed up the riverbank.
The water bubbles in the sunlight on its flank.
Where is the wind blowing?
How can we still hear the mountains and rivers murmuring?
Just look at that grass using its tilted shadow to protect the grains of sand.
O Twilight! You are so far away beyond the land,
How can we see the soggy graves soaked in the dew so dense?

5.
A can of milk lies quietly by the side of a market drain.
A wandering stray dog comes beating time in the rhythmic rain.
I am wandering about looking for a grass.
The dog’s eyes tell me:
“The same thing in a hundred years’ time will last.”

6.
The ship is now departing; have you any secrets to be held in esteem?
The sunrays sparkle, the water bubbles at the end of the stream.

7.
The mild cold comes at the end of autumn.
On a porch a dog plays around with the sunlight that blossoms.
The sunlight suddenly goes out of sight.
An immeasurable sadness we are now coming by.

8.
A call out of a vendor in the alley:
Power meter!
Circuit breaker!
Light switch!
The call-outs suddenly come and go away.
Who cares about the sunshine or the rain during a hundred years of a life span?
On the porch, who will pick up the flame petals that land?

9.
Yearning like a star dreaming in its sleep.
Mankind is lost in its temporary life during the many nights so deep.
The streetlight still coldly stares through the window.
To redraw the landscape of sunrise, tomorrow I will go.

10.
A mango in my heart I have kept deep down.
To chew it in my sadness I take it out.
People of the past, where have you gone?
How lonely I am on earth, you didn’t take me along!
You painted my portrait, but you forgot half of the thing.
Half of me stays in an inn, the other half just wandering.
Half of me enjoys the company of fairies in the sky,
The other half stays awake in the long hellish nights.

11.
Silently lying at the bottom of the graveyard.
No moon, no star, I just find it hard
to understand why people die, but love does not?
Human lives keep transforming but their dry lips cannot stop the rot.

12.
I counted one two three
My many neglected days lost;
I buried my head in thick smoke where I have been on the trot.
Smoke and dust here
Intermingling with each other to create ideas;
But dust is loitering about dark ferry landings full of fear.

13.
Leaving behind the cattle herd with their amorous eyes,
I flew up the sky to become the Lord of the ephemeral life.
I look down onto the earth darkened by the cigarette smoke;
Why can’t we have a bit of sunlight to dry up the damp way of living of those human folks?

14.
I am wandering about in Paradise.
Eternity is blurred by moss and dirt.
I go down and stir up the waves on earth;
and set fire to the sun to destroy the endless loneliness of the world.

15.
A white buffalo wandering about the streets,
Nostalgically chewing the eroded moon now becoming a tiny bit.
On the red roof a flock of shivery sparrows trembling;
The evening dew might cause them more shivering?
A snake lurks in the alley;
No street dirt, it will be meandering into a no through way?

16.
Picking up a grass
To measure time past
But it eternally lasts.

17.
Please grant me a few drops of moderate pain;
Let the wind rise on the hill to sprinkle drops of rain.
The wind blows through the gloomy streets;
The rain falls somewhere on the banks of the reeds.
The midday sun discolours the old town.
I pass through my dream, and I suddenly startle and find myself on a mount.

18.
An elderly man shivering in a thunder shower in town.
Down a stream a skinny girl in a red floral silk dress gets drowned.

19.
You have gone away leaving behind the empty forest.
For a tiny little stream to look after the morning star by your request.
Your shadow crushes monument and palace.

20.
Oh sadness.
Eternally divine.
Recalling the cycle of life,
Sand and dust redden one’s eyes.

21.
At the buzzing sound of mosquitoes,
One startles and awakes.
Far out there
someone is having a long journey to make?
The flood overwhelmed the country.
The children drowned and away passed.
I sat on the riverbank
Caressing a dream grass.

22.
You resented me
And left me for your dream Galaxy.
As a swan I just feel lonely.
A thousand years on from now,
Swallowed deep in the ground,
And brightened up by the shower.
The change of colour in the blood will be really sound.

23.
Deserted.
Sand dune burns.
Murky moon.
Deserted.
Sand dune.
Murky moon.
Plants and trees dreamt
About the fate of the land

24.
Where are you going? Your countenance looks so wearied!
The footprints of the coming and going are fading away drearily.
The Path of History over four thousand years now looks wavy.
So the ones that left didn’t promise themselves any dry land to see.

25.
The wind rose high and up the water bubbles blew.
The field was shrouded in cloud and dew.
The town was not drowsy.
The smoke befogged the banks of the non-entity.

26.
A flock of storks stand off balanced but not dormitive,
Looking down the horizon with the eerie eyes of the deceased.
The horizon collapses, the trees shed their drooping leaves.
The gate of the metempsychosis opens up to a new life to live.

27.
I wait for the rain to stop then head for the tope.
Anxiously listening to the wintry and tearful smoke.
The reeds sweep the sunlight over my hair on my top;
It’s only mirage, everything suddenly stops.

1st day of the year Tân Tỵ

28.
Look at that Red light falling on the pagoda lawn.
The sickle moon drips blood throughout the time to mourn.
A monk’s robe is blotched by dust and its colour is gone.
Smoke and moss have tarnished the temple wall.

29.
If you are not happy, I will come back home to do the farming.
I will sow the spring breeze and wait until summer when it will be raining.
I will listen to the croaking of toads and frogs calling each other in the spring.
Who knows when the market place will stop the floodwater from coming?

First of January

30.
Tossing in the night and glancing at shadows of ghosts.
So many one-night stands in an inn I have got.
No flowers, only a smouldering candle taper like a flowers’ flash.
The apricot flowers blossomed and waited for spring to come at last.
Now the streetlight is dimmed out, spring has gone past.

31.
Hey, mower on the riverbank, are you listening?
Don’t you find the billowing current on the horizon disturbing?
The willow tree has been trembling.
The forest is no longer filled with its familiar sweet smelling.

32.
Smoke! Please glide lower down!
Let me catch something from my youth that has gone by now.
I am walking in the Eternity
Feeling the miss of the little thicket that shed, time and again, flowers from the trees.

Translated by Dinh LUONG
BA. (Français, Saigon Uni.)
Graduate Diploma in Education (ICE Melbourne) – Australia
(Melbourne, 31 March 2006)