Then he asked her, switching to slow French that was charmingly distorted by his drawl, if she’d ever seen versions of his poems in another language? Chinese, perhaps? She shook her head. She said, in English, that there were too many different words, in English and Vietnamese. Too many words that cannot be translated. She held out her palm, made a wall with the other, a chopping motion to indicate that there were some barriers words could not cross.
