Change
Time is still there
Only the cold river reflecting clouds
Flows into the June dusk
Time is still there
Only the cold river reflecting clouds
Flows into the June dusk
Time is still there
Somewhere
Shining birds fly over the village well
Feet walk over the old fields at harvest
Tears leave no trace
Along the canal are lapok trees, their leaves
like clouds
Sweat-grass is turning the grave-mounds green
Willow-hair flows silently down
Time is still there
This frightening silence
A silence worse than hopelessness
Even the sound of a leaf makes my body tremble
I stand still but I cannot stand still
My sparse hair is whitening little by little
A constant stream of thought
Has furrowed my brow
Time is still there
It never changes
But it is this world
It is you and I
Our eyes see differently now
Ngo Tu Lap has published more than twenty books, including four books of fiction, two books of poems, five books of essays, and many translations from Russian, French, and English. Among the authors translated by Ngo Tu Lap are Jorge Luis Borges, Blaise Cendrars, Otto Steiger, and V. N. Voloshinov. Ngo Tu Lap won seven prizes for his writing. His book Black Stars was nominated for the PEN Poetry in Translation Award, 2014. His works were translated and published in France, United States, India, Sweden, Belgium, Canada, Thailand, and Czech Republic.
Martha Collins’s eighth book of poems, Admit One: An American Scrapbook, will be published in 2016 by the University of Pittsburgh. She has also published three volumes of co-translated Vietnamese poetry, most recently Black Stars: Poems by Ngo Tu Lap (Milkweed Editions, 2013). She is editor-at-large for FIELD magazine and an editor of the Oberlin College Press.
