“Nghe lời anh, chứ không cần một chữ...” “Hearing your words, and not a word among them...”

“Hearing your words, and not a word among them...”

Hearing your words, and not a word among them
Tuned to my liking, on a salty day
When inland woods were pushed by winds that flung them
Hissing to leeward like a ton of spray,

I thought how off Matinicus the tide
Came pounding in, came running though the gut,
While from the rock the warning whistle cried,
And children whimpered and the doors blew shut;

There in the autumn when the men go forth,
With slapping skirts the island women stand
In gardens stripped and scattered, peering north,
With dahlia tubers dripping from the hand:

The wind of their endurance, driving south,
Flattened your words against your speaking mouth.