There still is the fire in the funeral pyre of father in a dark corner of the jungle
Shaking my childhood memory
Into movement.

The old shadow of father mingled with the shadow of the hills
The hills embrace menace.

Mother walked in her thin and dry gait
Paths are everywhere in the jungle today.

Only the fitful white wilderness is left
Filled up with night-birds’s cries.

The smouldering fires, blown away from father’s funeral pyre,
Squeezed my childhood memory
into silence.

Tomorrow I will be blown to mingle with the jungle of streets.

*
Translated by Nguyen Tien Van