Nguyen Chi Thien
A Jungle Night
A jungle night–it rains and rains, roofs leak,
Shivering with cold, we hug our knees, trade stares.
The pale blue dot of fire on an oil lamp.
The can for piss, the can for shit.
The bed with stinging bugs.
A prisoner's New Year's Eve, in Sixty-one.
Vietnamese; trans. Huynh Sanh Thong
Nguyen Chi Thien, Vietnamese, trans. Huynh Sanh Thong,
Flowers from Hell, Yale University Council on Southeast
Asian Studies, 1984 .