Pham Xuan Sinh

Hurricanes Blasted the Earth

Hurricanes blasted the earth.
I was a small bird flailing its wings.
Death passed fast and near.
How many mountains could an ant climb?

Rifles and rifle butts, sweat and despair.
A world blackened by terror fits
Prisons, arrests, roads and dead ends.
How many frontier passes where I didn't leave a footprint?

Now what voices do I hear call at midnight?
What ghost talk, ghost cries do I hear call in my ear?
Clarity's price is an immense sadness.
Mending even a bit of an old wound, is it possible?

A new land and my hair turns white,
roofs of old villages disappearing in mist
A life half-drawn from a bad lot
equals a half-life of night sweats.

Is there a home I can fly back to?
Or is it that too another of time's myths?
Is my sentence to relive a broken past,
my life a shroud of haze and mist?

Translated by Nguyen Ba Chung and Kevin Bowen