CHÚC MỪNG GIÁNG SINH & NĂM MỚI 2023-2024

 

LULLABY

 

 

Birth I gave you in a desert

not by chance,

for no king would ever hazard

its expanse.

 

Seeking you in it, I figure,

won't be wise

since its winter cold is bigger

than its size.

 

As you suck my breast, this vastness,

all this width,

feeds your gaze the human absence

it's filled with.

 

Grow accustomed to the desert

as to fate,

lest you find it omnipresent

much too late.

 

Some get toys, in piles and layers,

wrapped or bound.

You, my baby, have to play with

all the sand.

 

See that star, at terrifying

height, aglow?

Say, this void just helps it, eyeing

you below.

 

Grow accustomed to the desert.

Uniform

underfoot, for all it isn't,

it's most firm.

 

In it, fate rejects a phantom

faint or gross:

one can tell for miles a mountain

by a cross.

 

 

 

Paths one sees here are not really

human paths

but the centuries’ which freely

through it pass.

 

Grow accustomed to the desert:

flesh is not—

as the speck would sigh, wind-pestered--

all you've got.

 

Keep this secret, child, for later.

That, I guess,

may  just help you  in a greater

emptiness.

 

Which  is like this one, just ever-

lasting; and

in it love for you shows where

it might end.

 

Grow  accustomed  to the desert

and  the star

pouring down   its incandescent

rays, which are

 

 

just a lamp to guide the treasured

child who's late,

lit by someone whom that desert

taught to wait.

 

                  DECEMBER 1992

          TRANSLATED BY THE AUTHOR