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.