AN UNNAMED POEM

This love poem I wrote is, just for you
Unlimitedly long, which would take infinite paper and ink!
So, I wrote out my heart losing sleep;
The ink of blood kept running in my body.

This poem, I wrote a long time ago;
It was not viable to flip through the pages for searching the first.
I just remembered vaguely, the first day we made a promise together;
Now our children already grew to an age, similar to a full moon.

The more I loved you, the longer I wrote;
Poems were bound together into countless books;
Newspapers wouldn’t publish them owing to its size, printing shops lacking enough ink!
The library would not have enough racks, to save our scripts of love.

I finally gathered these poetic lines into my spiritual memory, strong and huge;
And compressed its every words, to fit my tiny brain.
We could also remember those stormy errors forever,
That caused us sadness, the one eroding our younger days.

That moment out country had undergone a brutal war,
The war that made even our forests lose its sleep
The battles tore our cities immensely,
Blood splashes were spilled even on the evening dusky sky.

I remember those days when I trembled, fleeing away due to panic
Clinging to my mother, I ran down trenches to avoid the plunder of manmade bombs
Intestines were swung on bamboo branches, flesh hanged on the guava trees
Villages and hamlets all devastated with  screaming noise.

We grew up in life digging bullets and plowing bombs.
Wearing a funeral straw, shaped as donut, We went to school
In the deep trench, we still read day and night(
Words softly rang sowing the nostalgia in each of us

This poem I will write until the days to come
When we both lie quietly on the carpeted  grass
But my darling! Our love still has it’s breath
The beat of our loving hearts would still, stir up the whole galaxy!

Ngọc Lê Ninh Translator: Shiju.H Pallithazheath