LIFE IS LIKE LEAVES

When the leaves are green, your love blossoms:
Its wonderful perfume is through time pervading. 
When they tarnish, your heart becomes confused:
Love is gone like algae that have drifted fading.


When the leaves grow yellow your face turns dim
Like, on fading shrubs, last beams of the dying sun.
They are dried: your eyes blurred and hair lost,
Skin wrinkled and forehead worn-out hard to shun.

When the leaves fall down, they open the way
For you to ashes to return, from mishaps to escape.
So, let us cherish it, as long as the foliage is green:
You know it - Life is like in the tree leaves' shape.

Aspirations vanish when branches' leaves leave:
In the same way, of Beauty dust will all bereave.

THANH-THANH  translator English
Bai tho Doi Nhu Chiec La  cua Ngoc An

GRANT ME A SMILE

Unable to see you for just one day
Suffices to lade my heart with sorrow.
I had lived a rubbish life for three years,
Until one day: much grief for the morrow.

You came into my existence as a gale
For far-off melancholy to surge.
I had already forgotten my karma; why
You had the heart to fancy in me to urge!

Which dreamers don't later wake up?
I have felt anguish from now on rise high.
You arrived then you left, I knew it; but
Why I got infatuated with this fleeting tie!

I will content myself with life's vision
Although in a twinkling I consent to.
You parted, I will go into eternity;
A short moment is sufficient to love you.

Let me come to see you this evening!
And please grant me a smile however!
I will embrace into my sleep my dearest
Whom I will still cherish forever...

THANH-THANH  translator  English
Bai tho Xin Mot Nu Cuoi cua Yen Binh – Le Xuan Ham

LIFE IS LIKE LEAVES

When the leaves are green, your love blossoms:
Its wonderful perfume is through time pervading. 
When they tarnish, your heart becomes confused:
Love is gone like algae that have drifted fading.

When the leaves grow yellow your face turns dim
Like, on fading shrubs, last beams of the dying sun.
They are dried: your eyes blurred and hair lost,
Skin wrinkled and forehead worn-out hard to shun.

When the leaves fall down, they open the way
For you to ashes to return, from mishaps to escape.
So, let us cherish it, as long as the foliage is green:
You know it - Life is like in the tree leaves' shape.

Aspirations vanish when branches' leaves leave:
In the same way, of Beauty dust will all bereave.

THANH-THANH  translator English
Bai tho Doi Nhu Chiec La  cua Ngoc An




SEAWEED

The evening is coming late;
The sun gradually fades on each high hill.
You hurriedly call out for me to halt and wait;
There is not a star in the sky immense and chill.
You are unlucky, I am unsteady;
You go into darkness, I come into dejection.
What for since on the wane already is my complexion.
Let us live each like a clam
Quiet in its shell, not giving a damn
Thirty years bittersweet... 
Ups and downs, getting into a jam
For viccissitudes to maltreat.
I wish I could crucify
Once the silk spread...
The spider that spinned at random its webs by
To waste the cocoon's selectivity so long bred!
My shape through days has got to recede
And my love through years... covered with seaweed!

THANH-THANH  translator  English
Bai tho Rong Reu cua Ngoc An

SPRINGTIME LOVE WORDS

I suddenly feel strangely nostalgic
Each time the swallows soar overhead.
Looking up I think it's our native sky, above
Emerald bamboos, golden rice widespread.

If you get back there take my deep thought
To the pretty river in the full moonlight,
The green reeds under the spring sun,
Each noisy wave stirring the sea at night.

The looming mountainsides at dusk,
The dying beams, the glimmers bland,
Like a painting with pervasive smoke
At sunset - So picturesque our native land!

If you get back there send my true words.
After ten years abroad I am drifting still;
So many budtimes have come again,
I have silently cried by myself on the sill.

It is late in winter, it is dead cold;
Losing one's country is losing one's range.
From thousand miles away, my love;
Once exiled, earth and sky are to change.

You go back there convey my best wishes
With full feeling and whole heart of mine
For peace and happiness for everybody
While awaiting the dear dawn's shine.

THANH-THANH  translator English
Bai tho Loi Tinh Mua Xuan cua Ngoc An

THE HUMANE HEARTS

From a far-away hardship-ridden country,
A war-ravaged native land sunk in welter,
My people, trying to survive troubled times,
Swallowed resentment to flee and seek shelter.

How many cities there are on the globe,
My Vietnamese compatriots are in most present;
Even on the snow-covered high mountain areas,
We, as refugees, willingly accepted, pleasant.

Twenty seven years adrift in this new country,
Many have luckily succeeded getting homes to own,
Creating positions and fame worthy of being Viet,
Though some with their old state into perils thrown.

Twenty seven years, so much favor and felicity!
The US, Germany, France, Canada, Australia, so on
Have so far helped our folks in their lives with
Physical and intellectual comforts to build upon.

As for me... ten years in this foreign land
I have witnessed freedoms, press, human rights,
Civilization, modernization everywhere
As hard working, hard studying lead to heights.

Thank you for all of your humane hearts
With my genuine rhymes of inmost laudation.
We Vietnamese communities pledge devotion
To lifetime service to every resettlement nation...

THANH-THANH  translator English
Bai tho Nhung Tam Long Nhan Ai cua Ngoc An

THE LOVING HEART

I have passed half the circumference of the earth; 
Now that I have met you, the first time I fall for.
Any charcoal fire is much less valued,
Because its heat contains no spiritual life's core...

The amorous heart is the noble heart;
Entering it I feel warmer than being a fireplace by.
Oh my affectionate soul! so immense, infinite,
I  have waited every minute for your love to reify.

My darling! please understand my sentiment:
How I feel cold through nights in the lonely room.
I wish I might have you cherish me dawn till dusk
So that my solitary soul stays no more in gloom.

My life will not be any longer tenebrous
Like evening dew to mist the countryside line.
Oh my sweetheart! how I feel awkward,
Not able to express enough new feelings of mine.

I only see all the inspiring joy in my depths rise
If I may be offered a life beside you to realize...

THANH-THANH  translator  English
Bai tho Trai Tim Yeu cua Ngoc An