Wish you would be silent
so that I can bathe in your
fragile sunlight

From one dimension of darkness to a darker one
I burn brightly
the type of light that splits destiny.

Decant hundred hundreds of life’s springs to fill my river
and dry up, and squeeze all
where is the gate of your parched field?

When you leave me, forget me
I have only poetry’s breath and tobacco’s smoke
to fill the blanks without you.

Shut a world, open a horizon
a poem toddling a new day
babbling new words.

I burn up piles of characters
to scratch for some phrases.
under the ashes

O tower! After twenty years in strange lands
Under my poetry there is still wandering
your destiny.

Translated by Quang Can