“I was at a loose end (didn’t know what to do -to kill the time)”

so I went off on a tangent and read her copied verse

her verse in a language second to mine ( English )

the letters tipsy turvy the sentences reverse

it was there – that poem the original

my mother’s tongue my first, his ( Vietnamese )

he meant this she thought what! ( I didn’t want to speak – dumbfounded)

I said nothing ( smiled ), and she

she went off into some world ( her ego )

so passing are the days, since “I went reading it”

I spoke – we ALL smiled ( she may have shed tears )

and the world was that colour ( baby blue )

______

MAY 2019


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.

By Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm

There's magic in translating a body of work from one language to another.

Leave a comment

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: