Fretful

A poem in Vietnamese by Sấu Mã
Translator: Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm
Photography: Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm

A thought threw to the sky

Met a dark cloud

As it turns out

Nothing disappears without a trace.

.

The earth struggling to shrink

So we may have 

A place

.

Shrunk so small

A sprinter to the touch

Conceivable

The bubbling

Heat

.

August 2020

_____

BĂN KHOĂN

.

Thả ý nghĩ lên trời

Gặp đám mây đen 

Thì ra

Chẳng gì tan không dấu vết

.

Trái đất phải cựa mình thu xếp

Để ta

Có một chỗ 

Ngồi

.

Dù đã thu mình rất nhỏ

Sờ xuống dằm

Vẫn thấy

Nóng 

Sôi

 .

23/8/2020


Sấu Mã, the poet is a retired professor living in Vietnam.

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.

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