by Tran Nhuan Minh

Why the days I’m living in are so strange?
Where do the Agricultural teachers go
To let the schoolboy of the 11th class go to the fields
To invent the machine for farmers to produce

Why the days I’m living in are so strange?
While retrograding one is proud of oneself,
even when poor and hungry one is still boasting
Selling “choi dot” while building a few villas
People who devastated Nature go to conserve
the environment

Why the days I’m living in are so strange?
The person that exterminated injustices, is also
the one who himself re-established them
This modern time Truth and the Morality of our Ancestors
All are measured by the value of money…

Why the days I’m living in are so strange?
The shortest way is from a meal to the cemetery
And the longest way is from the words to the action
Until when can that matter could be reversed?…

Why the days I’m living in are so strange?…

“Choi dot” means “the broom made of the dot tree that is similar to the reed tree in a number of towns in the frontier of North Vietnam”.

by Tran Nhuan Minh

Will you go back to Ha Long with me, to see that the rocks
also love each other, when amidst sea and Heaven
appears the Male and Female kissing rocks
Trees and grass fall into one another,
crafty under the late moon
One minute has gone by, no one can find it again
Mountains have cuddled clouds,
the wind cannot separate them

I’m sending back to you a little sadness of the Fall,
when the drop of dew falls on the eucalyptus
You’ve met me even though I was mixed in the blue sky
Like Ha Long Bay, the sunny sea has the beauty
of the sun, while the rain on the mountains
has the beauty of the rain
You’re more beautiful than in the old days, and also
younger than before…

I’m always beside you. How can you know
That when your lips were vaguely and suddenly pouting
And gracefully, you feel warmth on your palm
And that when the wind doesn’t blow in, the lap
of your dress flies…

by Tran Nhuan Minh

Man’s lonesome everywhere,
Adrift in life – will there be peace?
Life’s sorrows shall not cease,
Let union’s wine here be our home…