Lam Thi My Da
PROMETEO
Revista Latinoamericana de Poesía
Número 81-82. Julio de 2008.
A SHORT ANTHOLOGY
OF VIETNAMESE POETRY
Lam Thi My Da
1949
Untitled
In the field of myself
I gathered, nurtured, sowed seeds
Magic seeds I had kept very carefully
Thinking of the delicious yellow fruit they would become
But then I looked back
Startled
And empty
Because I had sown those seeds in a barren self.
Translated by Martha Collins and Thuy Dinh.
Lâm Thị Mỹ Dạ (born 1949) attended the Nguyen Du School of Writing and Literature in Hanoi and the Maxim Gorky Writers School in Moscow, and now is editor for several publications in Thua Thien - Hue, Vietnam. She received the Poetry Award from Vietnam Writers Association in 1983, the Literature Prize from the Vietnam Union of Literature and Arts in 1998, and the Vietnam National Poetry Award in 2001.