The Poem After the News
By Phan Tan Hai
Sometimes I finish a few lines of poetry,
you read them, hesitate,
look at me with pity,
and say my poems are a bit melodramatic.
What can I do—I confess:
please let me write as naturally as this.
These are hurried words,
written in haste so my heart won’t stop
each time I finish translating another sad news report.
If anything in my poems is beautiful for this world,
I would be mistaken for an angel—
I would be hanged in the streets of Iran,
shot on a corner in Minnesota,
buried under bombs in Gaza,
pushed into minefields on the border of Ukraine.
What can I do—my writing is a bit melodramatic,
because the words must cover the tears
I shed each day after translating the news.
I cry in the room where I sit alone,
with a laptop, a few bookshelves,
and an exercise bike.
Suddenly you push the door open.
You say the peach tree next door has blossomed.
You say the red flowers are beautiful, welcoming spring.
You ask why I’m crying over the keyboard.
You say we’re not in a Korean drama.
You say my poems smell like incense.
You say my poems sound like temple wooden bells.
You say spring is coming—why am I crying.
What can I do—my writing is a bit melodramatic.
In the news I translate, too many people die,
and they have no time to speak,
and they have no time to write,
and their hearts have no time
to beat one last time.
— California, January 28, 2026
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