THIS AFTERNOON’S ROSE – POETRY FROM VIETNAM

 

Bui Kim Anh

Poetess Bui Kim Anh was born in 1948, in Thai Binh province, Vietnam. She graduated from Literature Department of Pedagogical University. She used to be a teacher of Literature. She is member of Vietnam Writers’ Association, and Hanoi Writers’ Association. She has published 13 books of poetry and prose and won 3 literary awards of The Vietnam Union of Literature and Arts, Literature & Arts Newspaper, Education and Times Newspaper.

 

THIS AFTERNOON’S ROSE

This afternoon it blooms crimson

Maybe tomorrow

It sheds its petals

If I were young

Would catch each falling petal

Will you lend a smile?

Kiss a lip that color

To cheat myself

Or to comfort

Woman’s age

Lend me your love

To keep writing an enrapt poem

Then search forever

I hide myself gracelessly

Poem hides marks

Untouched this afternoon’s rose

Petals falling

***

COLD AT THE END OF WINTER

Roses frosted

Proud in a room

Cheerless knowing it won’t last the night

Bewildered verses

To wake up wishing for light

Night but night I remember

 

Mist or spring rain

Cold at the end of winter freezing cold

Unnamed emotion

Hair blowing with the wind

You no longer bring poem to me

I no longer fantasize about myself

 

I sit among the arranged space

Drop a seed of poem each day

Seeds of life that do not divide up emotions

When the world is turned upside down

Mist or spring rain

 

I know that I cannot dream

***

YOU ARE JUST SAD

I’m old, nothing wrong aren’t you

Your classic appearance

Hanoi’s classic street

You are just sad

The willow tree is earnestly by the lake

Afternoon light mixed with the blue lake surface

 

You accompany me when I am lonely

A woman writing poem she needs the silence

Whenever everybody sleeps, then poem wakes up

You look at the night

I look at you

 

Loneliness is complicity with the dark

If still love, let us write poem

The night shelters for the opened love

To prevent the wind beating through the curious window

Stop fear making me trembled

The poem cannot be named

 

I forgot

Clumsy in the old street

Don’t you hesitate to be with me for years?

Don’t you drink a glass of wine with me?

 

A love poem without lips

***

BY CHANCE YOU CAME

Harmless sparrows fly in

To chirp a short melody

I grab the phone taking a quick photo

Capturing the moment of flying birds

 

You came by chance

As the deciduous shadow

As the misty illusion

And then disappeared without entanglement

____________________

(Translated into English by Khanh Phuong)