A Preface on Completion

Poetry is sailing out to sea, is bridging all the isolated shores, is sorting out the shapes and colors. Let’s go now, in serenity, holding hands and wishing that we could metamorphosis into the moon, the round full moon right in the Season of Purification, of the Sail on the Open Sea.

Let’s sit down with all the Ups and Downs, putting words in order and play with them. From now on, there will still be the ghosts that sing to one another until the end of the glorious rule. Millions of dreams will enable smiles to spread over the mountain and rivers, over everything and in every direction.

Change does not hold the powerful position of destiny any more. Change is the exposition of the heart for other hearts to approach it without having to wait even once.

Here, poetry has not once been plaintive; it has not once been joyous. It is the strand of thin smoke that has lost its color of unreality, dissolving and flowing in thousands of watching eyes of destiny. Therefore, above and before every thought, poetry is always subconscious.

Hence, neither is poetry Puss’s boots nor a shape symbolizing the many worlds but one season as any seasons, which passes by one after another. 

The same fingers wave hello to you in the pale dawn although humanity is breathlessly running after the red twilight out there...

Original title: Bai Tua Luc Hoan Thanh
From: "Binh Minh Cam" (Shrouded Dawn)
A collection of poetry written in 1975
published in 1985.
Translated by Andy Kale