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• Ta về nghe xót xa hằn đậm
  Dấu vết thời gian quá mịt mùng
  Để nỗi yêu thầm đau chất ngất
  Đời lên tiếng khóc bởi bao dung

  Nhìn trước sau đâu cũng đất trời
  Hương lòng đổ lệ thắt đầy vơi
  Tình chia nhiều nỗi ngàn cung bậc
  Nhỏ máu mềm thân chỉ một lời.

• Tô Thùy Yên – I Return
  I return – a shadow on the big road
  No one wrote poems on the faded flap of my shirt…
  Why am I feeling a sudden tenderness in my guts?
  Ten years, even the stone will pity me

  Farewell to me – For ten years I was a man beaten down and left for dead
  In the sacred forest that has remained silent for a thousand autumns
  Ten years, I look at my dark face reflected on the ravine
  I see me turning into a primeval ape

  I return crossing lagoons and passes
  The wrinkles on my forehead play with the passing and whimsical winds
  Mindlessly I watch the ancient sky and the ancient earth
  And I hear the remnants of the sand and the dust and the months and the years blow by

  Just that. The sky is mute and the earth holds itself in
  Life is silent and takes on a bluish green sheen
  Ten years, the world grows visibly older
  The earth is turning gray, the earth turns gray…

  I return like the passing shadow of a late coming bird
  As if hurried by the late seasonal winds
  Who is standing there watching the clouds and the water
  With hair and beard that have been gray for a thousand years

  How may wishes get fulfilled in a life?
  Times and again moutains slide down and rivers fill their banks
  The many sounds that history makes have abated
  Ten years, is there anyone writing them down in the ancient records?

  I return with my speckled gray head bent
  My heart is heavy as it feels the generosity of heaven and earth
  Thank you, oh flowers that bloomed for me
  The world is joyful at each lonely moment

  I Imagine that houses have opened their doors
  That in my village, the stone horse has crossed the river
  That people go like fish swimming in the flowing water
  As the ceremonial drums hurriedly sound the five beats of a welcome

  I return like a leave falling to the roots of the tree
  Gathered around a warm kitchen fire tonight
  Of this little red wine, let’s pour some down
  To cleanse away the injustices that turned mulberry fields into seas

  I cry and thank life as my blood flows
  My guts are as tender as the rocks beneath my feet
  Ten years of these lightning flashes and primordial rains over the oceans
  The one who is awake hears sadness coming in from very far away

  I return like a dewdrop on a blade of grass
  That contains in it all the changing earth’s sorrows
  Even tiny things experience birth, change and death
  Why make each other suffer more, people!

  The breath of autumn blows remembrance into the shop at the sloping road
  Ten years, now we see each other clearly here
  Thousand of miles across mountains and streams, oh clouds that float like duckweed
  I resigned myself to drink to the last drop the bowl of water that was offered to me

  I return like a white silk thread from the heavens
  Fluttering and flowing along with the waning sunrays
  Who calls whom, and who walks on the empty road?
  Yes, aren’t they the gold and the stones calling out to the mandarin road?

  The curse that spans karmas still weighs heavily
  As if caught in a love of life that can’t be undone
  I miss the one from far away and who is beyond remembrance
  Ten years, I am still just me.

  Nothing was as orderly as it was before
  The house is in dire straits, life is listless
  The hedge is leaning, the gate has collapsed, and grass fills the steps
  The old guest is no more, there are few new guests…

  I return to remove the curses from the old sacred talisman
  It is time to wake up, wood and stone!
  Tell me again about the ten nightmarish years
  Tell it to me just once, and then just let it be

  This afternoon I will wander around aimlessly
  I will greet each tree, I will visit each house
  Hi pomelo, hi briar rose, are you all still blooming?
  Ten years, will the trees even remember the one from so far away?

  I return like a prodigal son
  My life bankrupted in the mulberry sea
  Ten years, yes I have grown that much old
  And mother and father, you too are like lamps running out of oil…

  I think back about my broken and battered life
  A hundred promises made, not a single one fulfilled
  Life flows by, waves after waves breaking on the ruins of illusion
  A tear like a silent drop of dew cries as the sky changes

  I return like a cry echoing back from afar
  The pondweed crept up the border and have flowered
  Even if it takes a thousand years, you will be standing there
  Waiting for me like the sea waiting for the river

  I call out to time hiding behind the door
  The joy I feel brings tears to whose deepset eyes
  I feel the blood of gratitude cursing through my veins
  As if we thought we were lost to each other many karmas ago

  I return even if I have to walk barefoot
  All over this world to meet you
  Suffering is not confined to just places where wind and sand blow…
  On the front yard, the banana trees still stay awake through the night

  Does the old pomelo tree still remember to let its white flowers bloom
  The night is still not too old, oh waning moon!
  Old love is like sleepless old age
  The sound of each stumbing step is in the night is like a lament

  I return like a mysterious dream
  Like a child looking for happy nights
  Moonlight leaves a burn on my soul
  All my life, remembrance shines relentlessly

  My child, of the old happiness and sorrows
  Let’s live, let’s stand up and fight back against oblivion
  The cricket is still the same cricket
  It still sings in a familiar voice and as it travels along the blade of grass
  Its voice still sounds familiar

  I return like the water flowing out of the stream of enlightment
  The bright star of ten years has somehow dimmed
  Of my relatives who among them are now gone?
  I listen to life and hear it getting emptier than before

  The dead took me to the grave with them
  On a sad night, who else is standing there at the edge of the pond
  Crying for someone, as I cry for me falling down
  Old age, oh losing more and more of my grip every day
  I return like a sorry and regretful ghost
  Searching again the streams of time to look for my own self
  I pick up each piece of scrap and feel sorry for them
  As if each one of them is a bone that is becoming nameless

  I sit here – on the foundation of my ancestral home
  Rereading the poem of my youth
  Who in my soul is sobbing?
  The moon above still misses its aimless and playful wandering

  I return like a beloved and longed for golden crane
  That once flew and glided over this dusty earth
  I regret that my limited existence
  Doesn’t allow me to fully say all that are in my heart.