What ghost led me to the bar

I fell into the eyes of the first Cham working as an embracing beergirl
She sat close to me and that caused the retraction of my childish head
Oh I could gaze into everything and do whatever with her
But what would I like to gaze / to do!?
Her eyes changed the colours of my thoughts
Any relationship between her coarse calves imprinted with paddy-stubbles
and the slender legs of ancient apsara dancers?

I gulped down a long draught of Beer 333.

Any relationship between the unfathomable forehead
of an An Giang fisherman on Mekong River
and the proud chin of Shiva?
From the Võ Cạnh stele to the chair I sat on this evening
not enough for a draught
How could my soul sublimate?

Father taught me to spell the name of a vague river
The legends told by maternal grandpa I did not like to remember
Glang Anak wrote a very thin poetic work that many genenations learned by heart /
but misunderstood its meaning
How could I lament with you in our mother tongue?

The ghost pulled me from the bar

What did the ancestors contribute to the present degradation?
The souls of the descendants are as dry as baked bricks
The guttural sounds remain in the cave of the throat among the people of Quảng Nam
for 500 years without losing their traces
Still the sad eyes are imprinted with deserted towers
Still the thick lips, bushy brows, wavy hair, dark skin, and sinewy biceps.

I stood motionless under the veranda in rain

Yesterday
I slapped in jest on the beer onehundrudth belly of Cham men
Any implication between the unruly mane of Emperor Cei Bin Swor
and my friend’s big belly?
My daughter said: Father, last night I dreamed of many deflated balloons.

Oh so miserable
We grew up from Mĩ Sơn, Dương Long
We grew up from the yo and halam houses /
we also grew up from the huts covered with USA corrugated iron
From the folksongs of Panwoc Padit, Pauh Catwai /
also from the Tale of Kiều and the poems of Nguyễn Trãi
From the sunlight, rain, and storm of the Central Region /
also from the fertile fields of Tây Ninh, Châu Đốc
From the swampy deltas of Rí and Ô /
also from the water of rivers in Panduranga & Phan Thiết
We know the names of Confucius, Socrates, even Jaspers and Derrida
We read sparsely from Dante, Tagore, Sartre, and Palmer
What a pity we are the bastards of history!

I rushed into the rain

Oh, being a friendship candidate Ph.D. lecturing in a university hall
Oh, being a fellow-countryman with a peasant ploughing in Quảng Nam
A distant relative of the seventeen-year-old embracing beergirl in Sàigòn
Of the same blood heritage with me are many intellectuals infected with million viruses
of arrogant bookishness.

I walked to an unknown destination tonight

I many times begged my wife not to say disease but rwak
I taught my youngest son to practice the correct pronunciation of jwai, panwoc, twei
I admonished a friend of mine not to talk with his children in a mixed language
Who were my teachers?

Please forgive us the monsters born from the fragments
of a recycled civilization
Pity the mandapa who believed themselves important
Pity the chicken head on the feast tray who believed himself important
That personality tried to be important with solemn gestures and rhetoric
Pity for me also in seeing them without any kilogram of importance.

I fell into a slumber in a corner in the house of ghosts

The pages of history should be closed up quickly behind our backs
as the bar is closed behind our backs
Even though we are not reactionary to the past
The children forget their yesterday game right away
Forgetting helps them grow up.

It’s funny
I make poems to argue with my shadow.

At last I crossed an intersection to go home after midnight

In the morning, in high sprits, I went to the Lu River
A pole on my shoulder, with a basket of 41 characters of inu akhar Cham K C T
on one side, and the Latin A B C on the other side
I pushed their heads into water and forced everyone of them to take a bath
And I took a bath with them joyfully.

Translated by Nguyen Tien Van