Summons

Under that sky over those forsaken stars 

Falling like your own tears
You wished never to be hungry through generation and generations
Tonight against the universe of my hair
Whisper me another promise!
When the fragment of the setting sun carries away the distance
The urban braches and the dusty roads, the jamming streets
That was the evening when life becomes trafficless
The day I depart for that land
For a land that smell of smoked fish
The land as sour as the potful of soijin
And odours a clayey rural sweat

From beyond the hills from where …
Clouds have their endless exodus
Would you believe me if I say
Our ancestors were those clouds?

Would you deny if I say …
That I branch out my tea cup over that sky

For a drop of that rain for a spoonful of sugar?

Would you believe if I say

This land means same to me
As to her who casting her net standing on the edge of that slender boat?
In that river that give them the scent of fish

My poesy swindle you with musical strings of words

Like would you believed me when I say
I string for you a set of pearls from where the great poets were exiled?
Would you believe me if I write about seas that does not shore our land
I don’t own a sea to write of its foaming waves
I don’t have a tower from the top of which I can see all the splendour of this world
All I have inherites is a phanek khongdai
With the scent of women I belong to
A few old weather beaten leaves of pages
Where I write poetry with an broken pen with dried ink
I abandoned a few and gathered fewer
I am richer by irresistible summons from the fields and hills
Long after call from all quarters cease

Barren heartlands

Right here in this world

Right here on this earth

With old forgotten folk song on my lips

I have tilled your barren heart

Reaped the harvest of the land you left

I have broken down the forts made by them

I had no time to string a garland for you

Here I stand unadorned and unarmed unlike others

Right here in this world

Right here on this earth

In the crowd I am jostling to reach you

As you walked out of the prison

I swear they must have told you I am untouchable to you

Right here in this world

Right here on this earth

Your smile couriers my spring

Your tears announce my monsoon

There will be a time when I stand for trial nude under the blushing sun

That hour I shall not be judge with gazes

There must be skeleton of our words

Footprints of our voyages

Fossils of our nameless desires with its countless denials

In this lifetime I may not see the mountains washed away

That covered the relics of things  I call ours

Yet there are strings of echoes from beyond,

And you are the sole inhabitant of that kingdom beyond

New Year

This last night of dying year
Orion is bright in the flooding seas of stars
But then what does this new year mean to them
Is it that they appear and disappear?
Then what does this New Year mean to us
That we disappear and never appear?
When my body my soul and my heart
Blooms into glorious yellow blossoms
In the meadows some day
Why wonder?
When the rhythm of July rain
Echoes as my footsteps
In the fields of this valley some day
Why wonder?
Though you are miles away
On my couch in this cold December night
I wrap a poem for you
In the warmth of my breath
In the scent of my tresses
So that when you open it
You read me in the poem.

To My Love

The moment you dethrone

That goddess in your heart

And replace it with me

Allow me to know

Let me taste it with a vengeance

The day when you wish to say

‘Let’s go home’

I am standing by

Ready to leave everything aside

To set forth hand in hand

When you want to let loose yourself

And swim in my wave

When you want to drown yourself

In the depth of me

Drunk with me

You just have to tell me

But never ask me where I go

In the midst of the dark night

Never ask me what I metamorphosed into

In the full moon light

Never ask me why

I vanish in those sullen evening

Never ask me to lock my doors

You never know when my wings burst forth

Never ask me to bind my hair

For my comrades trace me through its scent

My beloved!

Never ask me my revelation.

Nomads and their Caravans

Halt the advancing dreamlets

They only show the earthly

Hold the flapping winglets

They only tempt freedom

Hold the flooding starlets

They only drown souls

Halt the ticking timelets

The past is already brimming

Halt that story teller

That narrates my legend

Declining to be the heroin

I decide to join the caravans

Of nomads of this tribe of woman

Tonight as I decide to marry

I prepare my trousseau

These dreams; these wings

These stars; these ticking times

See my groom on the horizon

He who nonchalantly walks towards me

I have not seen him ever before

But I do know his gait,

I do know his hair ruffled by the fingers of wind

I do know his scent

Like drifting from fresh bamboo grooves

I do know he is the one who should be coming

Long lost; long foretold to be found

The long time ticks away

Sand’s last grain slips through my fist

Right here; right now

I am a bride all over again

Broken Twig

Goddess of winter is at last awake
There are arrivals of departures
Of seasons and peoples
Bees of hours suck honey
From the flowers of my chronicle
Of love of an eternal whore
Every season brings a relic
From some far-away corner
Where the twilight scatters his shadow
Tentacles of nameless desires
Slither within me
Like swimming in the flood of wind
Like walking with no end
In the trimmed fields of ripe paddy
Like laying at the foothill
Caressing the green fur of the mammoth mountain
Like knitting a yarn from the cotton cloud...
Of all ...
Golden evening sky with the lonesome star
Broke the branches of my heart
My tears are none but
The dew at the tip of a broken twig

Open Door

When you wake up from my arms

When the glow worms beckons you

When you wish to read

The golden poems written by dusk on the horizon

                                        The door is painfully open

When the orchids have woven their garlands

When the thunder wakes you up

When you wish you disentangle

Your fingers from my hair

                                        The door is painfully open

When the echoes from highlands come to blow

With the growl of the valley

When you wish to take up your weapon                 

Of warhead with rose

When you wish to whisper the last word

                                         The door is painfully open

When you want to become the son of this earth

When the throne await you to be crowned

When you wish to dethrone

The maiden of this soil

                                        The door is painfully open

When the “chengi”of tresses of other woman lures you

When the songs of my valley no more pleases you

When you wish to shrug off from my aroma

From the cage of my love

                                     The door is painfully open