A Vietnamese Poetry in English Translation Explicated - The Field

The Field

Written by Tran Quang Quy

Translated in English by Unknown

Explicated by Ramesh Chandra  Mukhopadhyaya

Again I  hear the grass field at night overflowing profusely with moonlight

Somewhere footsteps stuck in thick mud

The aroma of hay blows across the field

The paddies

Like square insignia stamping human lives into muddy soil

Drop of sweats passing through generations

Spreading into shirts of dew, fading eyes of loved ones

The  earth giving birth to uncalculated seasons

Where my grand parents lay still

Their figure leave their legacy in the  rice seeds

The farmers go through their lives

Passing on a blunt hoe like a jewel

All of them harvested this field to gether

And this field has harvested them

I have opened my life

On my fathers plough slaving away

And deep down there in me there exists a sacred field with no harvest season

My mother cultivates and harvests kindness

The richness distilled from the suffering heart

She has released me onto the surface of the land

As if I were a seed to continue the generation of furrows

Greening  greening  a belief in emerald grass

Drifting away endlessly on human field

The  first line opens with—Again I hear etc. The very word again  suggests that the poet was away for a long time did not hear what he is hearing now. Again the poet hears the grassfield overflowing with moonlight. That shows that the poet was away from the sylvan environment for a long time. And now he is back  to the sylvan environment  which is dear to him. Here he can hear the grassfield overflowing with moon light.The poet has the ear for the silent voice of the grassfield. This helps the readers to hear the inaudible.The first line of the poem is musical withal. We hear a  sound and we see a grassfield overflowing with moonlight. This is an instance of synaesthesia. Does not moonlight stand for imagination? Does imagination have a free play where grassfields are abound?. The poet can see with his minds eye  footsteps stuck in the muds..The footprints in the mud make the landscape real before our eyes.The grass land is muddy. There must have been rains a little earlier. The aroma of hay blows across the field.The aroma of hay enhances the power of smell in the readers. The aroma of hay perhaps tells us that there is a nearby paddy field and the paddies there have been already reaped.

The paddies are the emblem that informs us straight that human life is inalienably connected with muddy soil.. Man has to earn his bread through hard toil  in the muddy soil of the field. Muddy soil is sacred; it has treasure in it for man to retrieve with the sweat of his brow. And the poet describes the human race as a flow of sweat passing from one generation to another.What are men but shirts of dew. This is an instance of metonymy. The sweat passes through the pores of earth and makes it muddy. Does not the sky sweat and the rains come upon the earth? And in turn the earth gives birth to many seasons----a season for sowing and a season for harvesting, a season for hard work and a season for merriment and so on.

It is in this earth that our forefathers have been buried. The rice seeds are their gifts. We have inherited the seeds the art of agriculture from them. And we must nurture them. We must properly use our inheritance from them to grow more food. Men in their elements are farmers and they  spend their whole lives in cultivating crops.Then they they pass on the hoe which digs the earth and extract the wealth therefrom. The blunt hoe is a jewel. This is a flat criticism of the values of the market oriented world. It is a pity that while which is essential for life has no value in the market, a piece of diamond which has nothing to do with the sustenance of life is sold for millions of dollars. Our value system should change. The blunt hoe has to deemed to be a jewel handed down to us by our forefathers. And the forefathers had worked together to dig the earth and  plough the field. There was a community life among them. But this is not all:

All of them  have harvested the field together

And this field has harvested them

Thus what is cause is itself the effect of effect and what is effect is itself the cause of cause. The idea of a first cause that something that does not itself need a cause is a myth and hence the  efficient cause and the material cause cannot be distinguished from one another. The producer and the produced cannot be separated from each other as well. The harvester harvests and the harvester got harvested by the harvest. And the process is being carried on without any beginning and it will be carried on without any end. These are flat repudiation of market economy.

The poem now navigates. In an autobiographical strain the poet remembers how opened his life on his fathers plough slaving away. And the poet seems to be proud of it. Because the concepts of master and slave and employer and employee have been exploded here. The father also stands for the time honoured rule of hard work and harvesting.

The field without also reminds one of the field within. This reminds a Bengali reader of a Bengali poet namely Ramprasad sen who laments that human heart lies fallow’ Had it been cultivated gold could be mined from the same. In Indian religion often the body is likened to a field and the same should cultivated by the mind. Thus the imagery of the sacred field within with no harvest season is archetypal.

The poem is clinched with the two lines:

My mother

Cultivates and harvests kindness

Thus the poem is singularly significant on many counts. It reminds of Thomas Gray:

Let not ambition mock their useful toil

Their homely joys and destinies obscure

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

The short and simple annals of the poor

The boast of heraldry and pomp of power the affluence of big corporate houses like HSBC or Microsoft –in short ambition is an accidental part of history. The real history of man narrates how the precious hoe is handed over from father to son and how the mantra of hard-work is  inherited by son from his father Human history is one of uninterrupted flow of karma. The harvest is derived from muddy earth. This might remind one of the Lotus Sutra. The lotus has its roots deep down into mud But the flower floats on the water. Mere production of food grains are not enough. The human society must be overflowing with the milk of kindness So cultivation of the field without is not enough. The cultivation of the field within is also a must. And it is the mothers  who have cultivated and harvested kindness and love. Our mothers are the role model to cultivate the field within or the heart. The grass field overflowing with moon light is the symbol of a brave new world to be forged where  economic wealth overflows with human love and kindness.

But this is not all. The mother suffers and it is from that suffering that the poet sprang . Any creation whatever is  preceded by sufferings. And it is suffering alone that distils richness. With love and kindness for all, the mother suffers and creates . A child is born. The child is the effect of a cause and yet he is the seed for bringing about fresh effects. The seed has to continue generation of furrows or trenches in the ground. There is polysemi in this imagery.The farmer is the efficient cause . The ground is the material cause. The harvest is the final cause. The poet or the child was the effect of mothers suffering. But the effect itself becomes the cause for furrowing fields as well to continue the human race. Thus no one cause is responsible for any event or effect and effect whatever could be the cause of different effects. Again the mother here is symbol the earth and earth is the symbol of the earth. This mother cult and the earth cult seem to be recurrent feature in modern Vietnamese poetry  We came across this motif in My Mother by poet Phan Thi Thanh. The seed or the poet is to continue the generation of furrows—greening and greening. Any thing be it a seed or a man or anything else exists through action , And the seed exists through greening but it has an a priori belief or inherited belief in emerald grass which stands for freshness and youth. The belief in a brave new world and activity of greening have no end . They go on though the individuals pass away. Thus despite change in history a pattern persists. The green field overflowing with moon light might remind one of Bodhichitta which persists let change do whatever it can.