Nguyen Chi Hoan
PROMETEO
Revista Latinoamericana de Poesía
Número 81-82. Julio de 2008.
A SHORT ANTHOLOGY
OF VIETNAMESE POETRY
Nguyen Chi Hoan
1960
Thoughts
Spring grape vines cover my head with strings of bygone years
Thoughts spread mist over the dawn dusk river
Life passes, on the wharf people wash their clothes
and look up from time to time to catch their distant echoes
which slowly return to them
***
The deep dark water of the years twines and shimmers around my legs
Reflecting neither my body nor the blue innocence which I cannot fully taste,
The sound of siren thoughts roars upstream,
drowning the crowing of a rooster and the barking of a dog,
a boy rises and stares into the distance, excited
by his returning echo
***
Someone is watching me, from outside the glass,
He composes light and sound within his invisible bright eyes
I leave my book, cease beating the cloths
and take hold of my mind once more,
To my surprise, an echo has returned,
distant but close.
Translated by Nguyen Chi Hoan & Harry Aveling.
Nguyễn Chí Hoan (born 1960) served as a reporter for the Chinh Nghia newsweekly from 1978 to 2005; and as criticism & poetry editor in the Van Nghe newsweekly since then. Graduated from English Department of Foreign Language University of Hanoi in 1998.
