The Cherished Daughter

Mother, I am eighteen this year

and still without a husband.
What, Mother, is your plan?
The magpie brought two matchmakers
and you threw them the challenge:
not less than five full quan,
five thousand areca nuts,
five fat pigs,
and five suits of clothes.

Mother, I am twenty-three this year

and still without a husband.
What, Mother, dear, is your plan?
The magpie brought two matchmakers
and you threw them the challenge:
not less than three full quan,
three thousand areca nuts,
three fat pigs,
and three suits of clothes.

Mother, I am thirty-two this year

and still without a husband.
What, Mother, darling, is your plan?
The magpie brought two matchmakers
and you threw them the challenge:
not less than one full quan,
one thousand areca nuts,
one fat dog this time,
and one suit of clothes.

Mother, I am forty-three this year.

Still without a husband.
Mother, look, Mother,
will you please just give me away?

-- Anonymous (c. 1700 AD)--

trans. Nguyen Ngoc Bich
from World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity
 A School Boy’s Apology
By Le Thanh Huan

If sometimes I fall asleep in a lecture

Or shout and scream as if alone
Please forgive me, please don’t be angry
For I have no place to play.

I’m growing up I want to be a sailor

I’m wishing for a giant arena, a stream
I feel like yelling my life is beginning
Every minute I want to hold tight to my dreams.

But the fires of war have shriveled my joys

At every step I see guns turned on me
At every word I hear the crash of steel
Not believing, not understanding I only stare.
The slaughter goes on and on,
Blood and bones and hatred all strained red.

People running from the front to look out for themselves

Cheating, lying, stabbing others in the back
Some of my friends have fallen.
No one knew, no one cared, they were dewdrops that’s all.
My home will be burnt to the ground
The way back cut off, partitioned…
 Inside Submarines
by Phan Nhien Hao
tr. Linh Dinh

We live inside odd-shaped submarines

chasing after secrets and the darkness of the ocean
on a voyage toward plastic horizons
where vague connections can never be reached
and hopes are not deployed
before the storm arrives and the alarm command starts
to rouse the last illusions to stand up and put life jackets on
looking to each other for help

Once I was at the equator

trying to slice the earth in half along the dotted line
but someone held my hand and said:
“If you do that, friend, water will fall into the void,
and then our submarine
won’t have any place to dive.”