from the Vietnamese original “Quê hương” (on Da Màu, September 14th, 2010)
a country crushed
whitened thrown out packaged cut grafted discarded burned hauled away
wrapped
staying put in oblivion
a country with no voices no sounds no people
a country with no sanctuary drifting on high seas
on deserts on archipelagos on snowy summits
in graves
country country
is the first passionate spoken word that I learned
tracelessness
the song
is a bunch of decaying words
EE-A-EE-A
like sand from the stones
like dust from the earth
it rises up
country on the hilltop
sacred summit
like a boat of ghastly echoes
it seeks unreality
how many pages must one turn?
to recover wholly the corpse of one’s own people
which collided into the shore of history and disappeared?
an illusion.
will I then breed
that last line of blood
onto these written pages?
somewhere
somewhen
EE-A-EE-A
wildly, the world repeats all these tragedies.
.