“Listen to me, skull!
Under your thin brittle boneplates
what black memories haunt you?
What do you want? What do you dream of? …
Is it your soul you think of,
flickering through frightful nights? …
Skull, I must have been raving mad
to smash you with my bare fist.
Scarlet blood thickens on my fingers,
plagues me to spew these rhymes, and still
my teeth want to tear you to pieces!
Like a raven I'll swallow even the sucked-out bones
to get a fresh taste of the past,
a drop from the torrent of months and years.”

— Chế Lan Viên

"Skull", in A Thousand Years of Vietnamese Poetry, ed. Nguyễn Ngọc Bích (Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), ISBN 978-0394494722, p. 166
Original in Vietnamese https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/che-lan-vien-to-a-skull/vietnamese/, and an English translation by Hai-Dang Phan https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/che-lan-vien-to-a-skull/, available at Asymptote.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Chế Lan Viên 9

Vietnamese writer 1920–1989

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Chế Lan Viên 9

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