Little sister, do you know why humanity passes down ancient tales, from hand to hand, from generation to generation? It is so that each generation ca… - Che Lan Vien

O Heaven! Today I am sick and tired
Of the colors and forms of this world! ...
I close my eyes to disregard the present,
Gradually shifting into the past upon my eyelids.
I close my eyes to let the dark shadows arise boundlessly,
Immense as in the deep of night,
To let my soul grow dark with the artificial,
In the world of the dead so long awaited.
Let the shades of ghosts and demons one by one appear.
Let their cries, their shouts of epilogue, reverberate in my ear.
Let me roll about, my soul intoxicated with illusion,
To put out of mind for a few minutes the scenes of this world!
Let my soul soar rapidly over great distances
In the dark night shadows of my eyelids,
And proudly assert: Here is a world
Created in a moment of grief.

<p>...[E]ach moment of joy but prompts the more
That madness buried at the base of dreamy souls,
That sadness in the dark citadel of the heart,
And in sorrowful eyes, images of innocence from the past.
All the Past is but an endless string of days,
All the Future is but a series of graves not yet fulfilled...
In the summer sun, fresh leaves begin to change in hue,
Weaving the autumn whose arrival is imminent—as in our lives
The green days follow in fading succession,
Weaving the shroud that covers our souls.

One translucent day I leave the city
to visit my home, the land of Champa. Here are stupas gaunt with yearning,
ancient temples ruined by time,
streams that creep alone through the dark
past peeling statues that moan of Champa. Here are dense and drooping forests
where long processions, lost souls of Champa,
march; and evening spills through thick,
fragrant leaves, mingling with the cries of moorhens. Here is the field where two great armies
were reduced to a horde of clamoring souls.
Champa blood still cascades in streams of hatred
to grinding oceans filled with Champa bones. Here too are placid images: hamlets at rest
in evening sun, Champa girls gliding homeward,
their light chatter floating
with the pink and saffron of their dresses. Here are magnificent sunbaked palaces,
temples that blaze in cerulean skies.
Here battleships dream on the glossy river, while the thunder
of sacred elephants shakes the walls. Here, in opaque light sinking through lapis lazuli,
the Champa king and his men are lost in a maze of flesh
as dancers weave, wreathe, entranced,
their bodies harmonizing with the flutes. <p>All this I saw on my way home years ago
and still I am obsessed,
my mind stunned, sagged with sorrow
for the race of Champa.