"The others leap, shout,
Freedom!
The moving water will not show me
my reflection.
The rocks ignore.
I am a word
in a foreign language."
"We are all immigrants to this place..."
(Disembarking at Quebec, Margaret Atwood)
The poem is the writer's lament for her loss of the native soil. They were immigrants to the heaven of freedom. But the price they had to pay for that freedom was loneliness. While some of the immigrants leaped and shouted joyfully for the freedom they had years longed for and found at last, the woman in the poem felt she had lost something precious. She looked around, finding herself in a dead silence where even water did not show her reflection and rocks ignored her presence. She was not who she had been; she was not herself anymore. From that moment on, she found out that she was just a word in a foreign language.
Loneliness. It may be the treasure, or the price we have to pay for freedom.
Modernist poetry, it might be a bit difficult to read and to comprehend.
Below is the poem in full text:
"It is my clothes, my way of walking,
the things I carry in my hand
-a book, a bag with knitting-
the incongruous pink of my shawl
the space cannot hear
or is it my own lack
of conviction which makes
these vistas of desolation,
long hills, the swamps, the barren sand,
the glare
of the sun on the bone-white
driftlogs, omens of winter,
the moon alien in day-
time a thin refusal
The others leap, shout
Freedom!
The moving water will not show me
my reflection.
The rocks ignore.
I am a word
in a foreign language."
And my translation is as follows:
Là quần áo của tôi, là dáng đi của tôi
Là những gì tôi mang trong tay
cuốn sách, chiếc túi thêu,
màu hồng xa lạ trên chiếc khăn choàng
không gian không nghe tiếng tôi
Có phải chính tôi thiếu
niềm tin tưởng đã tạo nên
những phong cảnh cô đơn này
những ngọn đồi dài, những đầm lầy, cát trắng,
ánh sáng mặt trời
trên những ngọn xương trắng
driftlog *
sự u ám của mùa đông
mặt trăng xa lạ ngày dài
một sự từ khước mong manh
Những người khác đang reo vang:
Tự do!
Làn nước chảy kia không cho tôi thấy
hình bóng tôi
Đá cũng lặng câm
Tôi chỉ là một từ rơi rớt
trong thứ ngôn ngữ xa lạ này.
* Driftlog: I cannot look this word up in any dictionary available, and I cannot figure out its meaning. 
Anyway, on the Vietnamese translation, sure you will find me influenced too strongly by Vietnamese modernist poetry, right? I know, I know... "từ khước", "lặng câm", "rơi rớt"... None of them is my true word. Well, I have tried my best not to be influenced by modern Vietnamese language, but it is really hard to create new words or new ways of expression. Where is my white flag??? 
