LatinosUSA

Lavender farm, Tasmania. Photography by Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm

A poem in Vietnamese by Lê Vĩnh Tài
Translator: Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm
Photography: Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm

You’re thinking about the past, it’s not a watch or a bell ringing, as March begins to flower you could already feel the coffee berries ripening, in October,

Your body is the calendar, two more days and it’s my birthday, and after I’m born, I will hunt down death, the past will be in your belly by nightfall,

I’m thinking about our child, the past could never sow seeds for a future of fear, I could give you my eyes or you could give me its eyes, but then again, will the past survive?

It’s in our blood, all of it, the past will die if it is not baptised, I will die the day I’m given a name, and nothing is amiss because there will be a woman present on that day, weaving a net to behold our life, knotted and flimsy, sad and full of the regret of how you were in a rush to get married

My death will ooze from my wrist and the card with my name on it, it is a warm room, a place reserved for blood, two days for your death, two days long enough for me to die,

There is no cure for love, it metastases with time, often sordid and corrupt, it would cry out in the middle of the night when it can’t breathe, it will never age hence, it’s always there waiting at the front gate, on the veranda, ready to call out your name,

Say that you’re mine, as the swarm of mosquitoes hover all around, ready and waiting…

—

Lê Vĩnh Tài, the poet and translator born in 1966 in Buon Ma Thuot, Daklak, Vietnam. The retired doctor is still a resident of the Western Highlands and a businessman in Buon Ma Thuot.

Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm, the blogger, poet, and translator, was born in 1971 in Phu Nhuan, Saigon, Vietnam. The pharmacist currently lives and works in Western Sydney, Australia.