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