A poem in Vietnamese by Thanh Tâm Tuyền
Translator: Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm
Art: Đinh Trường Chinh

Night unfurled its wings into nothingness at four o’clock in the morning

The Saigon River ran beneath the blinding fog

The moon fell in a flash

Dropped

The yellow flame dangling at the beginning of a song

- My love, come, don’t you know how much I need you.

The soldier on duty hid from the cold

In the threadbare layers of his clothes the carefully hidden verse

Out of nowhere landed on his lips flying high then down through hell

Headed for the sky

Like a bird awkwardly circling streetwalkers

Shaking, back and forth I climbed the steel ladder

Canoes and wavering flames of torches near the citadel

Searched for the body of someone who had drowned

(A young woman had slipped from Đáy River’s wharf that…