Empty Space
Translated By D. H. Tracy
There were two kingdoms only:
the first of them threw out both him and me.
The second we abandoned.
Under a bare sky
I for a long time soaked in the rain of my body,
he for a long time rotted in the rain of his.
Then like a poison he drank the fondness of the years.
He held my hand with a trembling hand.
“Come, let’s have a roof over our heads awhile.
Look, further on ahead, there
between truth and falsehood, a little empty space.”
Street Dog
Translated By R. Parthasarathy
It’s really something from the past—
when you and I split up
without any regrets—
just one thing that I don’t quite understand . . .
When we were saying our farewells
and our house was up for sale
the empty pots and pans strewn across the courtyard—
perhaps they were gazing into our eyes
and others that were upside down—
perhaps they were hiding their faces from us.
A faded vine over the door,
perhaps it was confiding something to us
—or grumbling to the faucet.
Things such as these
never cross my mind;
just one thing comes to mind again and again—
how a street dog—
catching the scent
wandered into a bare room
and the door slammed shut behind him.
After three days—
when the house changed hands
we swapped keys for hard cash
delivered every one of the locks to the new owner
showed him one room after the other—
we found that dog’s carcass in the middle of a room . . .
Not once had I heard him bark
—I had smelled only his foul odor
and even now, all of a sudden, I smell that odor—
it gets to me from so many things . . .
Me
Translated By D. H. Tracy
Lots of contemporaries—
but “me” is not my contemporary.
My birth without “me”
was a blemished offering on the collection plate.
A moment of flesh, imprisoned in flesh.
And when to the tip of this tongue of flesh
some word comes, it kills itself.
If saved from killing itself,
it descends to the paper, where a murder happens.
Gunshot—
if it strikes me in Hanoi
it strikes again in Prague.
A little smoke floats up,
and my “me” dies like an eighth-month child.
Will my “me” one day be my contemporary?
A Letter
Translated By D. H. Tracy
Me—a book in the attic.
Maybe some covenant or hymnal.
Or a chapter from the Kama Sutra,
or a spell for intimate afflictions.
But then it seems I am none of these.
(If I were, someone would have read me.)
Apparently at an assembly of revolutionaries
they passed a resolution,
and I am a longhand copy of it.
It has the police’s stamp on it
and was never successfully enforced.
It is preserved only for the sake of procedure.
And now only some sparrows come,
straw in their beaks,
and sit on my body
and worry about the next generation.
(How wonderful to worry about the next generation!)
Sparrows have wings on them,
but resolutions have no wings
(or resolutions have no second generation).
Sometimes I think to catch the scent—
what lies in my future?
Worry makes my binding come off.
Whenever I try to smell,
just some fumes of bird shit.
O my earth, your future!
Me—your current state.
