Let me tell you about our country

Let me tell you about our country,
its shapes raised up from rivers and hills;
I wandered on through road dust and mist
so that now I can tell you.

Our country is still the rows of bamboo,
the tamarind lines, the palm woods, the hills of fan palms,
sometimes just a blade of grass by the road,
and a small, fragile flower.

I walked through fresh, clean mornings,
through sunsets of purple and red,
through things I had not understood,
like how people in hardship still find joy.

The farmer still breaks into a smile,
the old woman's wrinkled eyes still shine with happiness,
and yet we, the young, have sometimes,
before our legs grew tired, longed only to "leave".

---

Lung Cung, October 2022
First published in Vietnamese on Phong is writing. English translation for this site.