Vietnam poems
More than 40 years ago I wrote
a poem: Hanoi
our hearts in exile
in whose pulse we slowly move
forward, in our interior
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The temple of literature where you put coins
in dark slots and young women chirping
in their mobiles, while the incense stick burns
A frog slides forward in the gray-green pond
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Everywhere, a woman in silk blouse, on a bicycle
with a giant lot of fragrant flowers
in yellow and white on the package holder,
in the middle dazzling rosy
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On the postcard, Uncle Ho sits
in the bamboo chair, in light cotton clothes,
with a long pencil between the index finger
and the thumb and a newly lit cigarette
in the left hand
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Around the green mirror images in the water
sat in the misty couple in love
Or lonely people
filled with dreams
and for me invisible thoughts
I’m neither happy nor unhappy,
just grateful that I can fill my mind
with this moment, in the rain, in Hanoi.