The poet of the text of the Vietnamese poem hidden face flower by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

The present author for the purpose of studying hidden face flower does not believe in any extra textual entity of the poet. The poet Mai Van Phan is one who has composed the poems of hidden face flower. What are the poems in hidden face flower? They are what the poet Mai Van Phan has written

Now let us  hereby seek to describe the poet Mai Van Phan as revealed through the poems. He frankly tells us that he is a humble lake on  which the peak of a mountain is reflected. A true poet always seeks to reflect the nobler thoughts in his write up. He is a gong stick wrapped up in shirt to give a tongue or sound of the bell to the  groans of man. He digs the soil of the collective mind to unearth the gems and images of the past. The poet is like the moon who spreads the fragrance to announce the coming of the Sun or the flower of flowers.He announces the coming of a brave new world. Storms might take place. But it will not hurt the flower the poet assures us Small things of Nature the twitter of a bird an arousing fragrance  make the poet  pray for the new leaves to comeThe rishi of the Vedas chanted in ecstasy---The wind is honey  honey oozes from the seas  every dust of the earth is honey.With Mai Van Phan the wind wherever it blows from carries the sweet essence of the lotus flower.This is archetypal. The poet unlike others seeks to gather moonlight.If they are scattered what else remains for him to gather. This reminds us of an Indian sage of a woman named Maitreyee who said that what would she do with things that do not give  nectar. The poet is the type of the seer whose roots are extruded aiming at the sky. This is also archetypal. It reminds of the Bhagavadgita a Hindu scripture that describes the world as an inverted tree with its roots in the heaven. We must take our sustenance from the heaven. The poet reminds of Shakespeare who was wont to find books in running brooks and sermons in stone. The poet finds a colony of bats in a cage of light. And mark you it is light in darkness. A wonderful imagery.Does the poet espy angels or liberated souls  in the bats? Poetry and dream are similar . But poetry has a medium dream has none. And in any dream whatever the dreamer must be present in some form or other.Is not the poet the self of the bird that sips some bright clouds.The poet is a visionary . He finds a flame invisible to the mundane eye that bakes the world of phenomenon. That is why the world is never static and stable perhaps. The poet is a seeker of truth. He asks—Who bakes in the trunk of a tree by another flame? Does the poet espy a saint in red skirt or shirt circumambulating the fire that lurks behind the show of things? His or her scarf is a Christmas flower flowing ….permeating …radiating splashing…Does the poet espy Jesus Christ in a never seen before attire? Does the poet  read the votaries of fire in the flowers of Nature?  We have already referred to the mountain that has been reflected on the heart of the poet. The poet seeks the road to reach the top of the mountain..And there is fragrance spread all over his being. Seeking the source of the fragrance the poet reaches a certain stony slope .Going up the slope the poet can find the sky or nothingness which has no trace of clouds or the sorrows of existence.Going higher up from empyrean heights the poet finds the earth as beautiful and as delicate as a dewdrop. This reminds of Lord Buddha who posited that human life is full of suffering. Our world is a vale of tears. We must follow our poet and climb up the mountain The poet is as humble as grass along a walkway. Being as humble as a blade of grass the poet drinks a full glass of sunlight.The poets beloved is the indeterminate that breathes in a bush or that which bakes with another flame in the tree.The blue sky symbolic of the nothingness seems to chisel the silhouette that hides the flaming truth. While the poet walks side by side with his beloved the flame of poetic imagination  the bole of a tree is lit up into a galaxy. A fresh creation myth indeed. Thus the more we read the poems of the hidden face flower the more we are  acquainted with fresh aspects of the poet that are time and again.

But look at the poem----A n evening  A rat and I Rush across a road. The poet Mai Van Phan does not think that a man is superior to a rat. The poet as well as a rat rush across a road. Here is a poet and man  with whom the meanest living being that breathes, the meanest worm or an insect that breathes can give thoughts too deep for tears

The Pure Sky of an Early Morning a vietnamese poem explicated

A POEM ENTITLED

THE PURE SKY OF AN EARLY MORNING

BY MAI VAN PHAN

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH

BY POMPEN HANTRAKOOL

EXPLICATED BY

DR RAMESH CHANDRA MUKHOPADHYAYA

TEXT

A small cup of tea

Half a cup is drunk

Sunlight shines in sodden leaves

A true poet perhaps could find great things as trifles and trifles as great things. A poem on drinking tea could sound trifle with the western cultures. True that the East is East and the West is West. But both the East and the West agree over a cup of tea and it is the contribution of the Far East to the world. Drinking tea is a way of life in Vietnam. On every occasion tea is served .And with the people of Vietnam every time is perhaps tea time. Tea is served at the roadside stalls along with a dish of sunflower seeds. There are teahouses . The architecture of the tea houses are unique so that one knows a tea house by its architecture. And there are myriad kinds of tea served in Vietnam.During the 13^th and 14 th century it was very polite to take tea. Scholars used to take tea to concentrate on the subject matter of deliberation. Drinking tea purifies the character and lifts up the morals- so did the elders believe. Vietnam if the writer of the present essay is correct has the oldest tea plant  that dates back to 1000 years.And  some scholars do claim that tea plants originated in Vietnam. Tea drinking is a tradition of the Vietnamese people for over three thousand years. Chinese people have been drinking tea since 2500 BC perhaps. There was a king who unknowingly took some poison and fell sick. Then he took some tea and at once he was hale and hearty. The effect of the poison was done away with. So earlier tea was taken as a medicine. Later the Buddhist monks opted for tea so that they could be mindful in zazen. It was during the Tang dynasty that tea drinking became universal in China.This is not all.Tea became one of the major themes and motifs in Chinese literature. The cup that cheers but never inebriates—Hurrah! But the introduction of tea is mingled with different legends. Bhagavan  Bodhidharma the first patriarch of Zen  it is said fell asleep while meditating. When he woke up he was so angry with his eyelids that he at once cut them off and lo! As soon as they fell on the ground a plant was there. Bhagavan Bodhidharma ate its leaves and was at once charged with fresh vitality. And it was Bhagavan Dogen who introduced tea in Japan.And there are many Zen tales around tea and tea cups

This poem of Mai Van Phan seems to spring from the very cultural backdrop of the Far East that we have referred to..

Well it is morning.True a stork swoops upon its prey. A dirty  morning indeed. But at the same time a bird sips from the clouds abloom in the morning Sun. And morning tea is being served all over Vietnam in every family. And the poet observes a small cup of tea. The cup itself is the earth element and receptacle. The tea stands for the water element and the earth element.The teaplant springs from the earth. A cup brimming with tea is like a person overflowing with love. It is like a cloud heavy with water particles. But  nay. If the cup is full there will be no room for fresh knowledge and wi sdom.This alludes to a zen story. In fact the mind has to be emptied. When the furniture of thought provoked through the senses by the outer world is expelled there are revelations from within, The  bird  drinks from the cloud  laden with water particles. Bard is a homonym of bird. So the poet is the bard and bird in one. He sips the tea slowly. And in course of time half of the cup becomes empty.The poet does not follow the zen guru literally. He does not drink the whole tea in the cup and empty the cup. He sips from the small cup and it becomes half empty. And there is the void. The void now mingles with the earth and  the water . Unless the void is there no sound could show up.A cup with a half cup of tea And lo! Sun light  fills the void. The sunlight could be the symbol of pure consciousness that rises with the waning of the consciousness of the outer world.And now earth air water and fire the four elements mingle.The cup becomes the microcosm of the universe. Since half of the cup is drunk the tea leaves are now distinctly visible. They are soaked in the water.The earth element is soaked in the water element.Now the sun shines upon them. . Why does the Sun shine upon the tea leaves.Why does the Sun take care of the tea leaves.People could forecast the future looking at a tea cup and looking at the tea leaves  at the bottom of the cup.Descrying the tealeaves at the bottom of the cup the foreteller can comprehend the remote future. The Sun is the seer. One wonders what  the Sun reads about our future and about  the future of the world.What does the Sun prophesy? There is no answer.The poet is here content to depict a situation.But the Sun seems to stand for happiness success and power. So let us rejoice at the sight of the Sun shining on the  soaked leaves of the tea.

Now looking at the title of the poem another level of the meaning of the poem becomes obvious. The sky is itself the cup. Darkness is the tea. Half of the tea is drunk.So it is  dawn  the hour when light and darkness meet. The Sun however shines on the soaked tealeaves or the Nature. A very  unique way of describing dawn. The poet Mai Van Phan  is always fond of the moments  when opposites meet.

An Eagle-a Vietnamese Poem explicated

An Eagle

By the Vietnamese Poet Mai Van Phan

Translated into English by

Pompen Hantrakool

Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

The Text

Flying up high

Increasing in confidence

The Earth is a dewdrop

As the title of the poem shows the poem dwells on the eagle. Just as the lion is the king of the forests so is the eagle king of the skies.It is the symbol of power and strength. It is associated with Zeus of Greece Jupiter of Rome and Odin of Scandinavia and so on.It is hope on God as per the Bible. It is incarnation of Saint John the evangelist.In ancient Egypt it is the falcon that is associated with Horus.The eagle has been the emblem of many a monarch of ancient Rome and medieval France. Napoleon also used it. With the resurrection in modern times Egypt chose  the emblem of an eagle. Well here in this poem the eagle flies high.He must have taken off from the earth. Why? May be he was tired of the earthiness of earth. Or else from the empyrean height he must take a birds eye view of the earth. He must look upon the earth steadily and as a whole.The higher he goes he is more and more confident. Because he is the lord of the skies. Because the skies and the void are his domain ;the skies and the void are the source of his energy.Once  sure of his strength

He looks upon the earth from the empyrean height and lo! The earth looks like  a dewdrop.When we are on earth the earth seems to be strong and stable. On the surface the earth stands for her solid substances like stone that are resistant to change.

But when we look upon  the earth from cosmic or  aerial heights  what  seemed to us as solid and hard and resistant  to change  turns into dewdrop  suspended or floating in the void.This clearly points out how the change of perspective effects a change in the meaning. The same poem therefore could be explicated in one way by Vietnamese culture and in another way by Indian culture. There is an aesthetics lurking here. But this is not all. The eagle could stand for the soul of the poet flying higher still and higher in the blue deep.From the earth, it might look like a cloud of fire to us whose race is just

begun. And from the skies the soul might look upon the earth as something impermanent as short lived as a  dewdrop. Everything in this earth is in a flux just as the waves in a stream.

Thus the poet and the eagle are seers in this poem

Meadow Flower A Poem in Vietnamese explicated

A Meadow Flower

A poem composed in Vietnamese by

Mai Van Phan

Translated into English by

Pompen Hantrakool

Explicated by

Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text

There is no one who dares to gather

This time

A bleeding flower

Flower and its associate fragrance are a recurrent motif in the hidden face  flower.The poet observed fragrance disseminated by the moon in the still of the night and knew that a flower was destined to be born next morning.On one level the Moon is the flower of the sky. On another level it is the fragrance that comes before the flower as the flowers messenger. What could be the flower to be born? May be it is the metaphor of a messiah like Lord Buddha or Lord Confucius.The wind is the life force of every living being and wherever it blows from, it lifts up the sweet essence of lotus flower. That is, the source of the wind is not important.One need not learn wherefrom the life giving fountain is flowing.The point is that wherever it goes it lifts up the essence of lotus flower. We infer that according to the poet every living being is therefore a lotus flower , every living being is a potential Buddha or a Buddha unmanifest.And it was in search of a flower that the poet climbed the steep. On another level Vietnam could be likened to a flower. Lotus is its national flower.The heart of Vietnam is as tender as a flower.Her monarchs burst into ecstatic poetry and carved poems on the rocks at crucial hours of Vietnams national history.And when the poet says that rain squalls cannot destroy a flower does he mean thereby that no foreign aggression however mighty ,can destroy Vietnam the land of poetry and the land that upholds peace. And does the poet allude to the hour of foreign aggression when the Vietnamese people were engaged in a life and death battle for survival when the poet Mai Van Phan himself was driving trucks from one Vietnamese military camp to another in the phrase- this time- in –

There is no one who dares to gather

This time

A bleeding flower?

May be wounded soldiers were lying in the meadow at the hour.  Just imagine a Vietnamese soldier –blood was  spurting through his mouth and it reddened his neck, and the front of his shirt a brilliant red. He is truly a bleeding flower in the meadow.But no one could dare to rescue these bleeding flowers in the face of continuous bombing.

What is a meadow? A meadow is an area of plenitude in both wildlife and vegetation. There are commonly hidden brooks or rivers in its neighbourhood to support the abundance of the wealth of  Nature. It is loud with voices from the streams winds birds and bees. It is a  mellifluous landscape peaceful and pristine. It is the place of silent growth. To pass through it is easy. It speaks of balance and harmony. It is a convenient environment for spiritual growth. The meadow here might stand for the beautiful land of Vietnam. And to find a bleeding flower in a meadow is truly a spectacle that thrills our hearts with unspeakable grief. The poet Mai Van Phan is a deft painter with words that evokes in us compassion that beggars words.The bleeding flower in the meadow is a metaphor for love  that lies bleeding. It is compassion that lies bleeding It is the Christ symbol.

On another level the phrase bleeding flower might stand for bleeding heart flower. A bleeding heart flower might mean undying love.When the poet finds a flower of undying love lying in a meadow and there is no one to dare to lift it up the poet seems to throw a challenge before the knights at arms. We are at once transported to the days of medieval romance and we are reminded of Chaucers Romance of the Rose

On a third level the bleeding heart flower might stand for the heart chakra and a man must undergo great penance to reach the heart chakra where he can hear the primordial logos Om. But there are few who dare to undergo penance to reach the heart chakra and lift up the over mind rhythm that is the elan vital of all great poetry.

A Dusk by the Vietnamese Poet Mai Van Phan expl[cated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

A  Poem in Vietnamese by Mai Van Phan

Translated into English  by

Pompen Hantrakool

Explicated by

Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text

Sunlight

reluctant to close waits until

A  chrysanthemum closes its white display of petals

Explication

The Sun neither rises nor sets. It is the revolution of the earth  around its own axis that creates the day and the night. So it aooears that the Sun rises and sets.We the common run of men are wont to trust the appearance and the geocentric theory works for us.The Sun  is not the same throughout the day.In the morning the Sun sets out for the odysseus across the blue deep.The dawn shows up .A stork swoops down in quest of its prey. An unkempt dawn indeed.Because with the advent of dawn the lust for life leaps forth.And yes to live one has to kill another sometimes. But it depends. In fact it is the person who reads his own mind in any environ ment whatever.Unlike the stork there is a bird that sips a bright cloud with the dawn breaking.There are storks among men preying upon their fellowmen. But there are poets also here who drink deep in the fountain of the clouds alight with the Sun. The poet awaited the morning and had kept awake throughout the night because the fragrance of the moonlight had forecast the birth of a flower in the morning.When  the  Sun touches the zenith it is in its full glory.Particularly in summer.And then a buffalo is found sleeping deeply.Just as the mood of a human changes from time to time so it is with the Sun.With the advent of evening the Sun becomes mellowed.It rises and sets rises and sets with the wading of the waters while a woman crosses a stream. Once she reaches the other side of the stream the Sun sets once for all.The event shows the rise and fall of the Suns heart beats at the sight of a woman crossing a stream When the woman is no longer seen in the waters the Sun departs from the world. When our loved ones pass away there is no point in lingering here on earth.Nothing is immortal under the Sun. One who is born is sure to die.The Sun knows that the chrysanthemum which burst into laughter in the morning, the flower whose birth was predicted by the fragrance of moonlight is also destined to close its petals.Despite this knowledge the Sun cannot let the chrysanthemum alone to close its white petals.  The Sun lingers till the chrysanthemum closes its white petals.Once the flower closes its petals the Sun sets. Once the woman crosses the stream of the worldly life the sun sets. The Sun is the king of the skies.Its  radiant prowess there is none to dispute. Its empire stretches from one horizon to another. But curiously enough  it does not neglect  the small chrysanthemum. It has its love for the little flower. In other words it is fond of every trifle  that inhabits his realm. All things both great and small  draw its care and attention. The Sun is the type of a great and wise ruler.Where have the woman and the chrysanthemum  vanished? Have they returned home whence they came to this world of phenomena? When the twilight seizes the courtyard of a house the flapping of the wings of gathering birds are heard.They are homing perhaps.

In the light of Japanese culture chrysanthemum is Sub symbol. .

Mai Van Phan the Poet of Nose in hidden face flower by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Mai Van Phan the poet of smell

It was Campbell who said  - Coming events cast their shadow. That was about battles lost and won. The shadow is espied by the eye and it is uncanny.But when sweet  fragrance   is spread all over one infers a new birth in the offing.Mai Van Phan fond of synaesthesia smells fragrance in the landscape bathing in moonlight. Fragrance here becomes visual. This is time and again.

And of course fragrance is the source of sweet notes. The poet notes that the voice of tree pies comes from each raceme of flowers,The twitter of a bird is an arousing fragrant incense . Here sound and smell are identified. It explicates the Chinese flower and bird paintings of the Ming period. Incense is used when we invoke gods. Here the poet invokes new leaves.

The wind carries the cargo of fragrance.The poet is situated in a place where lotuses are abloom.The lotuses are abloom in the heart of the poet.The wind could stand for restless and random thoughts. They become imbued with compassion  or karuna. They lift up the essence of lotus when they blow across the heart  of the poet

The path towards peace and liberation is tough and stony.It is the fragrance that leads the poet around mountains where some sharp stony slopes are descried.

And on his road to peace the poet comes across thorns.But the poet braves the thorns and discovers that they donot hurt each other. On the contrary they cluster together.In other words misfortunes donot come singly. But to our surprise the poet finds a fragrance passing through them. In other words the poet welcomes pain in life. Because true happiness passes through the wounds caused by the pounding of life by the thorns of sorrow.

But the poet holds his breath when obnoxious smell is there like a dewdrop that holds its breath hanging over a dirty puddle of water.

The dirty puddle of water signifies cities. The place where gods live is the antithesis of the same, The poet gives us the location of heaven .It is located just beside the scent of flowers.How does one distinguish heaven from other places? Well it is more fragrant than any other place. This is a description of heaven perhaps no where else found in prose or rhyme. Does not fragrance here suggest a kind of space which is different from the space we talk of?

And of course  two flowers injected aroma to each other.This is what true love is. Love does not mean physical union.Aroma implies the spiritual. The love between two flowers is Platonic indeed. True love is found between the poem and its competent reader. The reader reads his own mind in the poem. The poem provokes the reader to read his own mind in the poem.It is the objective correlative of the readers musings. Thus there is an aesthetics

The inagery of moon in Mai Van Phans hidden face flower

MOON 36 46 55 56 76 77 81 97 149 162

The imagery of the moon roughly appears ten times in the book of poems Hidden face flower eight times in Noi Dung and twice in Con mat ngheing

In  A  Flower the moon spreads fragrance to quicken the birth of a flower next morning.There is synaesthesia.The flower spreads fragrance while the Moon gives light. Ii is the eye that enjoys the moon. It is the nose that feels the existence of a fragrant flower. But when one sense modality is felt perceived  or described  in terms of another, it is a case of synaesthesia. But this is not all.The moon is the mind or imagination that broods on the nocturnal  or darkness so that it is manifest in the shape of flowers alight in day time. This could be interpreted in many ways . On one level whatever is manifest in the world of eye and ear  springs from the unplumbed depths of the mind. It speaks of an aesthetics. A piece of poetry is manifest in the external world, But mind  and imagination toils throughout the night unseen to bring about the poem in broad day light. May be the flower or the poem might stand for the morning sun

In the poem To be Aware the poet sets out in the night to gather moonlight.But it is scattered away by a tree.Hence he has nothing else to garner.This defines a poet.He is a person with whom neither gold nor silver but moonlight or the  abundance of imagination is the only wealth. And to gather the wealth the poet keeps awake in the night when  the rest of the world go to sleep

The moon  weaves a sedge mat. The poet can hear the sound of sedge mat weaving in a moon lit river.What could be the mat but a matrix of words or poetry.? (Return to the Village)

The moon or the mind of the poet is ever tranquil even in the face of storms or natural or man made calamities. The moon is the silent witness of the upheavals in the physical world.

Tea is the plant that sprang from the clair voyant eyes of Bhagavan Bodhidharma. The  moon reflected on the river or poetic fancies reflected on the minds of readers could function as a cup of tea that gives fresh vigour

Let the weevils do whatever they can the harvests of human civilization is not foredoomed to be destroyed Because the poetic imagination or the moon steadily drops down. The pure consciousness is descending upon that will destroy all evil

The moon stands for enlightenment. It manifests only in a Buddha. When people find it their shadows or the inner self bow down before the poet or the Enlightened One.

The moons shadow or reflection does not delude.It does not forge any decoy to attract  objects of hunting. One wonders what does the fishing hook of poetic imagination seek to retrieve in the shadow of the purer mind!

The moon is the symbol of  compassion for all things great and small . The more the grass is withered the more the moon is brighter to charge the withered grasses with fresh vitality

The poet however finds a cloud covering the moon. It seems to close the eyes of poetic imagination That is, on the surface, the book of poems entitled hidden face flower comes to its omega. But is not the cloud alight with the moonlight though the moon is hidden from the eye? Are  not the readers illuminated when the perusal of the book is over?

Thus the recurrent imagery of the moon in Mai Van Phans poems weave a particular strand of the sedge mat that is hidden face of flower

Two Seasons by Mai Van Phan: A Vietnamese Poem Explicated

Translated into English by Pompen Hantrak

Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text

I stand between

a cicadas chirp and

A chrysanthemum

Explication

The poet Mai Van Phan  positions the readers between two conflicting perceptions and impels the readers thereby to probe deeper into the koans of existence.The poet stands between  a cicadas chirp and a chrysanthemum.The cicadas chirp imples auditory perception. The chrysanthemum implies visual perception.While visual perception gives us the sense of space the auditory perception gives us the sense of time.Now a days it is posited that space and time go together they together constituting the fourth dimension. But Mai Van Phan asks  what if  there is an apparent conflict between space and time? Apparently sense perceptions take place somewhere beyond the sphere of consciousness.We have five senses in eyes ears smell tongue and touch. But when two sense perceptions are at war with one another our consciousness is impelled to rise up to the occasion.A fruit may look beautiful. But if its smell is repulsive consciousness is awake to the situation. It often vacillates—to eat the fruit or not to eat the fruit. That is how we can explain the vacillation of Macbeth who wavered from to do or not to do or vacillation of Hamlet who wavered from to be or not to be in Shakespeare.Each one of the five senses has its own object of love.And  the object of love of one sense might come in conflict with the object of love of another sense and the person who is decked with these different senses is at a loss what to do or what to make out of such a conflicting situation.Cicadas indicate summer. It is in summer that cicada males sing to invite their female counterparts. They sing together to invite their female counterparts.They can hibernate in the earth for years together and they can choose the time when they should be born.When they sing they sing in a group . Sometimes the sound of their songs wax and sometimes wane.But their song seems to have no ending because they can sing throughout the livelong day.They donot have any voice organ.They beat their bellies with their wings just as we beat drums.And there is droning sound may be reminiscent of the primordial sound Om.While towards the end of summer their songs continue the first autumnal flowers such as chrysanthemum wake up. The Bible says In the beginning there was the Word and God said Let there be Light and there was Light.Chrysanthemums stand for light ;they show up at the bidding of the cicada which stands for Word.True that Chrysanthemums are not  specific to any season.But in Vietnam they show up mainly in September and they continue till the Tet festival. In Vietnam they gather chrysanthemum particularly during the lunar new year , tao mo and cung gio.Tao mo speaks of the last day of every lunar year.It is on this day that the people visit the graves of their ancestors and clean them and decorate them . Cing gio is the anniversary of an ancestors death. It is during the Cung gio that the ancestors are worshipped. Chrysanthemums espied when cicadas sing might mean that the ancestors are hibernating,The poet does not see the cicadas but he can hear them. Similarly the poet cannot see the bodiless ancestors. But he can hear their inaudible somgs. This is not all. The cicadas stand for resurrection. Does not the poet Mai Van Phan position his readers between two seasons life and death? It is an unforgettable experience for any reader whatever.

A Ringing Bell: A Vietnamese Poem Explicated

By Pompen Hantralkool
Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text

A Ringing Bell
A waterfall drops 

A gibbon howls 

An insect
The echo goes on
Only in memory


A waterfall drops. It is a river or a stream suddenly falling from a steep height. May be the poet does not see the waterfall but hears its thundering noise. For example the waterfall named Ban Gioc in Vietnam hitting the rocks can be heard from afar. May be a waterfall is drizzling on to the rocks or pounding the rocks with soft intermittent bursts. The white noise of the waterfall masks distracting sounds and lulls ones brain to sleep or meditation. While a waterfall is being heard gibbons voices could be there. Gibbons are found all over Vietnam in the most northerly subtropical forests as well as in the lowland forests of the south. And their voices are mostly duets between a male gibbon and female gibbon. While the sound of the waterfall is continuous the voice of the gibbons on the background of the waterfall is discrete.. While the sound of the waterfall might suggest of one reality permeating the differences of the existence, the sound of the duet of gibbons suggests the dichotomy of the existence dangling from the tree of the one reality .While the monotony radiated by the waterfall or one reality speaks of an existence which is cold and where there is no diversity and variety, the voice of gibbons speak of the existence of two souls exchanging warm love between them. And now the poet hears an insect.. It might be the cricket the bee the bumblebee the ant the mosquito the locust and so on. We hear as it were bass or low pitch sound in the waterfall and midrange pitch in the voice of the gibbons and high pitch in the insect and they together constitute timbre. The vibrations in turn set in motion frequency waves called harmonics. Here is a poem that approximates harmonics where different sounds mingle into a complex and wonderful pattern.May be the harmonics enthralls the poet during his sojourns in the woodlands far from the madding crowds ignoble strifes .When the poet leaves the woodland the sounds are no longer heard. But the echo goes on in memory. Memory is the faculty of the mind which stores and remembers information.The sounds heard in Nature sink deep in the poets mind. Back from the clutch of Nature the poet perhaps being pent up in a city like Hanoi plunges into his subconscious. Or else the subconscious all of a sudden shows up suspending the conscious mind of the poet for a time.The subconscious mind could be likened to a forest where waterfalls and apes and insects are heard. They only evoke the silence created by the waterfall or the gibbons in the being of the poet. The waterfall and the gibbons and the insects are the voice of silence.Thus a silence fills the mind of the poet. And amidst that silence the poet can hear the overmind rhythm in which the water fall the song of the gibbon or the sound of the insect are sublated ever rolling on in the existence impelling all thinking things and all objects of all thought. Read in the Indian context the poem evokes in us the creative logos or the Om that presently calms our restless minds and lifts them to some supramundane plane

Ripe Fruit: A Vietnamese Poem by Mai Van Phan Explicated

Translated into English by Pompen Hantrakool
Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text

Ripe Fruit

Who bakes
In the trunk of a tree
By another flame

Explication

Baking is so important in our everyday life.Heat transforms raw material of food for our consumption.Take finely ground whole wheat flour in a mixer. Add a little salt to it and mix it with the flour thoroughly.Next add clarified butter to the same and mix it with flour thoroughly. Now slowly add a little water to the flour. Don’t add all the water at a time. The palms should be oiled a little so that the flour does not stick to the palms or fingers.Now flour and the water and the clarified butter should be mixed to a manageable dough with the hand.Now knead the dough so that it is pliable and stretchy. The dough should rest a while.Then it should be divided into balls. Each ball should be rolled on a rolling surface with a wooden roller so that each ball turns into a flat circle. The cooking surface should be heated in the meantime. Place the flattened dough on it and keep it for 30 seconds. Then flip it and heat the other side for 30 seconds. Now enjoy the baked product.This is how a kind of flour bread is prepared in India which constitutes the main food of an Indian The bread thus made is very tasty and nutritious.. We wouldnot live without food. And baking is the art of arts that prepares food for us so that we liveWe have studied how they bake wheat flower to make a kind of bread in India rather in details.It shows how complicated and yet simple the art of baking is. Just as the food we consume is often made by way of baking so are the foods prepared through plants by way of baking as well .Indeed whatever food we consume is prepared through plants. Sometimes we consume directly what is prepared through plant such as a guava or a pomello. Otherwise we take the food prepared througha plant as the raw material such as flour from wheat plants for the food we prepare for our consumption and there baking is rather a must. The baking in plants is also a complicated process. The baking in plants needs chlorophyll or green pigments found in the leaves of plants, natural sunlight or artificial light, carbon dioxide gases from the air exhaled by men and animals ,water and nutrients and minerals which the plants collect through roots from soil. Food is made through the plant by way of the process of photosynthesis with the help of light energy . Light energy helps to make sugar from carbon dioxide and water. Thus photosynthesis is the process in plants that convert light energy to sugar energy. As it is obvious from our description the making of food in the plants for the sustenance of itself as well as for sustaining all life in the earth is quite complicated . The making of food in plants needs lot of hard work and proper understanding of the aforesaid complicated process.It is our mother who works hard in the kitchen and bakes food materials on the oven for us to consume and live.The poet asks- who bakes in the plant? This is a question put forward by a sphinx and no Oedipus has yet showed up to answer it. Had there been no plants there would be no life on earth. We see the plants through which food is prepared. We see ovens as it were. But ovens do not cook Mother cooks food with the help of the ovens Similarly plants do not cook. Someone surely cooks using the plants.This is simple logic. But who cooks using the plants? Who ?Who?Who? Because cooking cannot be done on its own . Different materials and diverse ingredients are needed for cooking and it needs intelligence to properly combine those materials and ingredients.The chefs are the greatest among men in the world and cooking is the greatest art that man can ever imagine of because it sustains life.Should we then imagine a dryad in every tree in chefs attire and be pagans worshipping trees. Yes trees must not be felled to raise built space.We must learn to worship trees. We must go to our less civilized brethren who live in the neighbourhood of Nature and forests to learn the true essence of civilization and to worship trees. Again may be there is one supreme power which has created the Sun and which has created the earth and water at whose biddings the multitudinous dryads bake in the trees. There is no conclusive answer to the question—Who bakes in the trees.Mankind has been circumambulating the existence with the question since man first appeared in the world. We have no answer to this question even today. It is often claimed that poetry reveals eternal truths.May be. But the poet Mai Van reveals before us questions that man will ever be asking.

A New Day: A Vietnamese Poem Explicated

Translated into English by Pompen Hantrakool
Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text

The light of dawn breaking
An open young beak of a little bird
Sipping some bright clouds

Explicatio

The poem opens with the light of dawn breaking. It is breaking dawn.Breaking dawn is that time quantum and point quantum when the first light of the sun reaches the skies. The Sun is yet to show up. In other words breaking dawn is the hour between the first light of the Sun reaching the skies and the Sun rise. Daybreak is the hour before gods awake.To break here does not mean to separate.To break here is to burst forth or to come into being. The Bible as well as the Hebraic religion announces that God head is revealed with the daybreak.Similar instances could be put forward from different religions and cultures.The Vedas have beautiful hymns addressed to Usha or dawn. Dawn breaks out from darkness as cows break out from their enclosed pen. Dawn drives back black abyss and rains upon the liberated earth the priceless wealth of light and pure consciousness. In fact daybreak or dawn is a momentous moment when the opposites meet. It is at this line in between the opposites that one could find jouissance. It is the hour when Venus shines as the morning star and the lotus opes its eyes softly and Vietnam rejoices at the sight. Darkness dispelled, pure consciousness is diffused throughout the skies and there is a rain of light upon the earth. There are clouds of dense consciousness scattered all over the blue deep alight with consciousness.This is an an impressionist word painting that has been imported from heaven as it were. No wonder excited by the rain of consciousness a small bird has excelsiored to the dizzy heights where the clouds float and the poet finds it with its beaks parted mouth open as much as possible. The little bird is the symbol of infinite thirst. The word painting in front of us entitled A New Day depicts infinite thirst drinking in infinite manna. Is not the bird the soul of the poet himself drinking in the Niagra of light falling from pure consciousness . The poet or the bird is seated on the clouds conjured by the poets meditation . He wants to drink the purer nectar unpolluted by the fall outs from the earth. He cannot wait. He goes up to the clouds to quench his thirst. In Indian mythology there is a kind of cuckoo which has pied crest and which is known as chataka. The cha taka cannot take water from the earth. It can only drink rainwater when it drops from the skies.No better portrayal of a chataka is found in the whole range of Sanskrit literature than what Mai Van Phan does here. One thing the readers must admit. However small the bird might be drunk in the nectar from heaven the bird ( bard) showers upon mankind wonderful word pictures charged with light and pure consciousness

The Moon Rises: A Vietnamese Poem by Mai Van Phan Explicated

By MaiVan Phan
Translated into English by Pompen Hantrakool
Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text

The Moon Rises

A narrow house
A lot of talking
A mantis leaping upon the top of a tree

Explicatio

The poem depicts a situation. There is a narrow house . Inside the house men and women ard children are engaged in conversation among them. There is a lot of talking.These men and women are listless of what is happening outside the house.

A mantis an insignificant insect however is leaping upon the top of a tree

But who notices the mantis? Surely it is the poet.That implies that among the people engaged in lot of talking the poet is one. But he is the type of the wise man who participates in the conversation within the narrow house and at the same time takes note of what happens without the house. He does not fail to notice even a small insect like mantis.The truly wise have a quick eye and they pay attention to both great and small. The poet Mai Van here only shows. He has no personal comments on the surface. But what does the situation mean to a reader. Perhaps we are reminded of words words words. We human beings are heedless of what happens in the Nature. We are busy talking talking talking shut up in a house.We are absolutely forgetful of Nature and real world. So our conversations do not lead us to seek truth. They are loud sounding nonsense and dull. But we are so proud and so much plunged in selflove that we continue talking without stopping a little to notice what is happening in the world without. In the world without a mantis a small insect indeed has climbed a tree. It is jumpimg on the top of the tree.Why ? Because the Moon rises. A mantis is a curious type of insect. Its forearms are folded together likening folded hands of a human engaged in prayer.Unlike the mantis man does not know what happens in Nature. Unlike the mantis man does not know what the Moon is and what joy is there when the Moon rises. Poems are like dreams. While literature has a medium dreams have none. In any dream whatever the dreamer is always present. One wonders whether the poet is the mantis.One wonders whether the tree stands for the body.. In Indian tantra a coiled energy called kulakundalini climbs the tree of the body till it reaches the head where it attains immortal bliss. The rising Moon could be likened to the awakening of pure consciousness and bliss.The kulakundalini or the coiled energy or the self of the poet is here the insect that has climbed body and reached the head and that jumps in bliss. One may also read the tree as the tree of life.The poem leads us from bootless conversations pent up in the narrow house of the body to the wider world of reality bathed in the moonlight of truth consciousness and bliss.

A Vietnamese Poem by Mai Van Phan Explicated

By MaiVan Phan
Translated into English by Pompen Hantrakoo
Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text

The sound of a bird dropping on water surface
A fish jumps up
Snatching at a mosquito

Explicatio

The first line of the poem could be primarily understood in two ways. One--The sound of a bird drops on the water surface. Two-A bird drops on the water surface and its sound is heard.


The sound of a bird drops on a water surface . This reminds of hydro acoustics. Any sound whatever moves faster in water than in air. Leonardo Vinci said that if one stops ones ship in waters and thrusts a pipe into the waters and hears through the same one can jolly well hear any ship approaching despite the fact that the ship heard cannot be espied with the eye.Does the poet hear the sound through the water and infer the bird although he does not see the bird?.The bird is the messenger of the sky .The water could be the symbol of the mind. So a sound from heaven is carried to the poet through the pure consciousness lurking in him. And presently a fish leaps from the water and snatches at a mosquito.Now a days sounds can be seen. Think of cymascopes. And one wonders whether the sound of a bird dropping on the water turns into a visual. The theme of the visual is the attack of a bigger living organism on a smaller organism .One wonders whether the voice from the heaven drops onto our mind and its stagnant waters of subconscious where mosquitoes breed is stirred by a fish that symbolizes wisdom deep down our mind. The fish snatches at the mosquito that seeks the blood of man.Mosquito stands for the Id lurking in the mind. But we could read the poem in another way. A bird that preys on fish drops on the waters. The drpping sound is transported through the waters.But heedless of the approaching danger the fish is after its object of desire. And no wonder that the fish is thereby face to face with mortal danger. This is what happens to every man.We run after our objects of desire in the contingent heedless of the circumstances which are not in our ken. Despite the footsteps of Death we revel in running after our pleasures that consist of robbing others killing others and so on.But again the female mosquito bites for biological needs , the mosquito in turn is snatched by a small fish. A bird in turn seeks to feed on a fish. And that is the way of the world. On another level the world is made of conincidences or unlikely and apparently uncaused relationships between objects or events. Just when the bird is dropping onto the waters a fish jumps to snatch a mosquito.The bird is lucky because of the coincidence.The bird can easily catch the fish. Had not the fish jumped up to get at the mosquito the bird could not get at the fish .Every event in the existence is random and two or more events coincide.Hence the existence baffles us. We cannot make any sense of it. Of course a fish sometimes leaps up from water to catch a bird. Everything is open ended in this world. We cannot predict anything here.The readers of the poet Mai Van Phan are often confronted with inscrutable riddles of existence.

Moon Night: A Vietnamese Poem by Mai Van Phan Explicated

Translated into English by Pompen Hantrakool
Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text

Moon night

Putting hands on a pillow
Breathing silently and listening to a colony of bats
Flying through a cage of beaming light

Explicatio

After a whole days bone breaking labour the poet is left alone in the night ,his hand placed on a pillow.The hand on the pillow might mean the poets reliance on the tender things of the existence.The poets breath becomes slower . The poet breathes silently. It is the breath that keeps us in touch with the world busy getting and spending.The madding crowds ignoble strife makes us breathe fast and loud.But when breath becomes slower our emotions are soothered and our body becomes relaxed. And a time comes when breath is as it were silent. No doubt the poet with his hand on the pillow concentrates on his breath or else how can he observe that his breath becomes silent? With his breath silent the noise without and the noise within also die. His mind becomes silent. Once breath is silent and the noise of the mind quelled there is a sound within that is never heard on sea or land. It might be compared with the ultrasonic sound that the bats hear. Now the poet can hear a colony of bats flying through a cage of beaming light.Hearing is universal among the vertebrates. It connects the creatures with the vibrations that are the world.Hearing tells us much about the surrounding world and enriches us. Think of the murmuring leaves or gurgling brooks. Speech and music are however uniquely human. They are dependant on hearing only. The bats could be there without. The poet doesnot see them. The poet hears them. The bats could be there within as well. There are different kinds of bats. Quite a few of them take fruits and the nectar of flowers. Some others eat the very insects that destroy our harvests trees and plants. They keep awake throughout the night and hide in the caves during the day . Thus they are the type of the wise who keep awake during the time which is night to the common run of men. With us common men a life sans pleasures is the night. But the bats renounce pleasures in search of truth. In the light of the day differences show up and create the world of illusion. The differences are drowned in the one darkness of night enveloping the world. The darkness stands for the emptiness that sublates into it all the differences.Oedipus in Greek myth complained that Tieresias the fortune teller was blind. The blind Tiresias retorted that though he had no eyes ight he could see better than Oedipus who had eyes. Although bats can see in the night they are commonly deemed to be blind. But they do see better because of their inner light.During the winter they go in colonies or packs or sanghas to hibernate Bats are the only mammals who can fly for long. Although western cultures are not fond of bats bats stand for happiness in Chinese culture. Five bats together that is a colony of bats means five blessings in the light of Chinese wisdom. They are longevity. Wealth, health and composure, virtue and desire to die a natural death. The caves the bats inhabit are believed to be the gateways to beyond.The poet with breath slowed down relaxed in body and silent at heart can hear the colony of bats flying through the cage of beaming light.The sound of the flying could be the primordial sound Aum or the Word of the Bible which created the world. The birds are flying in a cage. The bird could be the soul and the cage could be the body. The bird could be an individual who is caged in the capitalist society forged with the wires of custom and brands. Well cages are a protection also.The reality and the infinitude cannot devour an individual if he or she is pent up in a cage. A cage is there to indicate that there is a world beyond. But here is a colony of souls or individuals flying in a cage beaming with light. It is surely moon light. The moon stands for the mind imagination wisdom soul and the like. When body becomes inert and the senses go to hibernate When no light from without could influence the mind the cage of the body becomes alight with the inner light or wisdom or the light of the soul.May be moon is not there in the physical world. What is day with the common men could be night with poets. And the poets can see the moon awake in their heart. May be he cannot see the moon , But he feels that it is there. And he can hear the primordial sound raised by the flight of a colony of souls in a cage beaming with light. It should be noted that the souls are flying after all in a cage.That is once the inner world is alight it reminds us that there are many more worlds beyond

A Sweet Fruit: A Vietnamese Poem by Mai Van Phan Explicated

Translated into English by Pompen Hantrakool
Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text

Extruded roots
Aiming at the sky
A little stem

Explicatio

Roots do not always dive underground. The roots of the banyan tree often emerge from the branches and dangle in the air. They are of course prop roots directed to wards the ground. But there are also plants whose roots are aerial. They directly drink water from the air. This happens in rain forests. Mangroves have roots feeding on air. They exchange gases from the atmosphere. The oxygen content of the soil where mangroves grow are not enough. Hence there are extruded roots to take oxygen from the air. The present poem dwells on a plant with extruded roots aimimg at the sky. May be the mangrove plants in the Red River delta where the poet was born has inspired this imagery.But what does the plant stand for? Deuteronomy 20-19 says that man is a tree of the field. According Torah mans roots are deep underground unmoving and serene drawing sustenance from the forefathers .The roots of the plants also go deep into the soil . Or else they are aerobic perhaps. But here is a plant with extruded or forced roots aiming at the sky.


Trees are a recurrent feature in Vietnamese myths. A banyan tree went up from the earth and struck its roots in the Moon.A tree gave fruits. A bird ate the fruits In exchange it gave the poor but honest owner of the tree ample gold






Then there is the tree of life or the tree with its roots going down to netherlands and excelsioring to the skies and beyond.


The shamans go up and down the tree and visit the heaven and the worlds below the earth in trances


Unlike these trees the Shrimadbhagavadgita a Hindu scripture describes the cosmic tree as an inverted one with its leaves and branches constituting the world and roots diving into heaven. In Jewish Kabalah the inverted tree stands for the nervous system in man which has the roots in the cranial and branches distributed among the other limbs of the body









In a vision the poet finds a plant with extruded roots aiming at the skies and a little stem. One wonders whether the image of this plant speaks of an aesthetics and the poets aspirations. Literature commonly has its roots in the earthiness of the earth and in the everyday world ; but its efflorescence is above the world. And there is a qualitative difference between the world of the flower and everyday world of ours ;between the world of mud from which the lotus springs and the world above the water where the lotus blooms; between the world of literature and the war-torn jealousy-lorn everyday world of ours. But our poet has different aims.He seeks sustenance from heaven and ether and air. The senses of the common run of poets draw the material of poetry from the worldly life. its tears and smiles. But the poet toils hard and forces his senses to draw the material from supra mundane plane. He extrudes his roots aiming at the sky. He will cull the pearls of wisdom from heaven and the skies and reproduce the same in human language or poetry so that humanity could feed on the heavenly beauty and fragrance of his poetry. The poet is an unacknowledged leader of men. Although the stem or the poets body is little if he can derive his sustenance from the skies he can move the world into melting mood and charge it with the spirit of universal love and kindness. And everyman can emulate the poet. Vietnamese myths describe the people as descendants from heaven. Hence the poems nostalgia for heaven

To Be Aware: A Vietnamese Poem by Mai Van Phan Explicated

Translated by Pompen Hantrakool
Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mujhopadhyaya

Text

To Be Aware
Moonlight on a tree
Scattered away
What little else to be gathered

Explicatio

It is night. It is night all over the existence and the globe. We are shattered from within driven by our multiplying desires. The world is jealousy lorn and wartorn. It is night indeed. And the true votary of peace and truth keeps awake in the night only. He is not carried off by the darkness of consumerism to dreams of material pleasures. Not deluded by dreams the poet keeps awake. The poet restrains his senses and goes out in the night. In search of moon light he goes out and braves the evil spirits that gambol in the night. Because it is in the night that mind not contaminated by the longing for this mans talents and that mans riches shines as the Moon in the skies.Unlike others who crave the articles displayed in the shopping malls for sensual pleasure the poet seeks something that bestows eternal life and deathless love for all things great and and small in the existence. The shopping malls are the night mares. Night mares take place in the night ; but the spectators of the night mares are oblivious of the night and darkness enveloping the world.Because being asleep they awake in an unreal world alight with artificial light. They are not aware of anything like moonlight that promises peace and love and eternal life. But the poet not led astray by desires and not driven to dreams is wide awake in what is night to common run of men . He goes out in quest of the moonlight in the middle of the night.While we the common run of men are in search of pleasures and objects of pleasures in the shopping malls made of the stuff of false dreams the poet is wide awake . Because he knows that when the world is flooded with the darkness of sorrow and ignorance truth and knowledge shines in its lunar glory cool and mellow. In the Upanishads –ancient Indian philosophical treatises there is a woman character in Maiteyee. When she is offered material wealth she exclaims what should she do with material pleasures. That which does not give nectar or deathless love and perennial joy and liberation for every one under the Moon is of no use to her. According to Indian mythology nectar is stored in the Moon. The poet also like Maitreyee is aware of the fact that material pleasures are mere tinsels appearing like diamonds.He renounces them in quest of Moonlight. Nothing less than peace love pure consciousness and infinitude can satisfy the poet. But when the poet is outdoor in quest of moonlight he finds that it is the tall trees that scattered away the same.Moonlight obstructed by the web densely woven with the leaves of the tall trees is not filtered on the ground But what else the poet can ask for except moonlight. Here is an aesthetics. A poet is one who goes out at the hour which is called by the worldly men Night to retrieve moonlight. True the poet finds it scattered. But one wonders whether Moon has espied the poets longing for moonlight or not. Because Moon is always a witness to all human efforts to achieve love and knowledge. We find the Moon as the witness to love. Was not the Moon only witness to the love vows taken by Kieu and Kim Trong?






Vang trang vang vac gia tro


Dinh ninh hai mieng mot loi song song


Toc to can van tac long


Tram nam lac mot chu dong den xuong






The Moon shines brightly from above


And we speak to each other love


Our deeper passions will bind us to gether


Like finest silk threads


For all time to come


This is what we pledge









Queen Moon from the empyrean heights has surely witnessed the pledge of the poet Mai Van that nothing less than moonlight can satisfy his longings in life.

A Vietnamese Poem Written by Mai Van Phan Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text

At Dawn

A water spider

Is awakened

In the middle of the lotus flower

Explication

Dawn comes out from the tenebrous wombs of darkness and nothingness. It is the beginning of a new day.  Expansion and contraction and expansion again is the order of the universe. Birth death and rebirth is the order of existence. Creation destruction and creation is the way of the world. And if night is deemed to be disappearance of the creation then dawn is deemed to be the hour before the gods awake—the hour in between night and day when nothingness fast disappears to make room  for fresh creation. The very line where the opposites meet where night and day meet is the source of jouissance. It is at the hour of unspeakable delight that there is the efflorescence of lotus . There is nothing as beautiful as lotus in the pond-so goes a saying in a folk song of Vietnam. The  pond could be the metaphor of the receptacle of existence or the creation . Lotus is the national flower of Vietnam. Just as the lotus has its roots in mud so Vietnam has raised its head from  years of bloodshed where the soil mingled with the blood of the patriotic  Vietnamese people became muddy.Vietnam has raised its proud and beautiful crown from that muddy soil. Vietnam  itself sprang from the waters of the Red Riverjust as the lotus  rises from the waters.The world winning beauty of Vietnam both natural and cultural can be likened to the beauty of the lotus flower only. Springing from the mud under water the lotus rises above the surface of the waters to bloom in its world winning beauty. It shows how the individuals as well as  the nations now grovelling in the mud and blood   of the world today might rise up above the sphere of sorrow  enshrining in it the deity of peace and disseminating love and peace. Creation however means difference.Unless difference is born there cannot be any creation. There cannot be the lotus alone. Unless there is the other a thing cannot exist. When the poet finds the water spider he knows that the process of creation is there and one wonders whether the poet rejoices in the difference and in the creation. Here is a poet who simply revels in pencil sketches of what he observes and leaves the same for the readers to explicate. And of course  the readers can  peruse the same from different standpoints. Just as Nature is satisfied in creating the sights and sounds so is the poet satisfied creating imagery made of words. Just as Nature has no comment on what it creates  so  is the poet  reticent in his comments on what he  observes. Just as each spectator reads his own mind in Nature so does the reader reads his own mind in the poems of Mai Vam Phan. The poet Mai Van finds a water spider in a lotus. To find is to create. The poet creates a lotus and a water spider in the lotus. It is the difference between the water spider and the lotus that indicates creation. If the lotus stands for the beautiful and elegant the water spider might stand for the ugly and the ignoble.It is these opposites that make the creation possible.But if the beautiful has the ugly at its heart or if ugliness implies the existence of the beautiful neither  ugliness nor the beautiful could be the object of our love. If we ever love the dawn or creation we enjoy both the beautiful and the ugly both the  good and the evil . Differences must be there. But we must not love this or hate that.We must be as compassionate towards everything in the creation no matter whether so called good or evil  just as the poet is all things both beautiful and ugly. He prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small. Vietnam might be likened to a lotus But there could be some people who are not as openhearted as the lotus that  welcomes the sun with petals unfurled. But no one should be deprived of our love and compassion. But this is not all. The lotus catches  unsuspecting  insects  for the spider to eat.. Hence may we take the liberty to infer that  we are drawn to the beauties of the world only to be eaten away by death.On another level  the beautiful exists in the world to support the ugly.And  furthermore that thing or person is good who does not hate the ugly. On the contrary the beautiful and the good always heip others to survive be they good or ugly. The water spiders live in waters . But they are found to float on leaves and sticks. The lotus here lets the spider to rise above water and have a stay on the surface of waters. The Mississipian culture looks upon the grand mother spider as the teacher who taught us how to weave and spin. It was the spider which created the web of life. With the Mississipian culture a water spider is a symbol of creative spirit. And when one espies water spider in a lotus, one might interpret the  same as the creative spirit awakened in the lotus or the womb of the creation with the advent of dawn. A  beautiful portrayal of dawn indeed

A Vietnamese Poem by Mai Van Phan Explicated

A  Poem Composed by Mai Van Phan

Translated into English  by Pompen Hantrakool

Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text

In the Midst of Winter

A mask is hung on the wall

Cold wind blows

An eye bores

Explication

Here is an eerie narrative. A room. A mask is hung on the wall. Cold wind blows. In other words, the atmosphere is uninviting.It  freezes ones sensibilities.May be that someone enters into the room stealthily. The eyes of the mask pierces into the heart of the intruder and   finds out that it is the poet Mai Van Phan. Hah ha. Poets donot steal objects. They steal the images of the objects.So the objects remain as they are. But they multiply being recreated in poetry.But that is another story. The object of hanging masks on the wall could be varied. In China for example they have dragon masks or lion masks. They embody lion or dragon energy to ward off evils and welcome fresh creative energies. There could be masks representing gods and fairies. But at the same time masks could be used to invoke or animate evil spirits. The minions of Satan and dark forces could be conjured by propitiating a mask. Yes masks could be interpreted as externalization of our inner self. A mask  often stands for a face with special feature. It often depicts a particular emotion. The mask in this poem is hung up on a wall and a cold wind blows. The cold wind chills the genial current of creativity. Hence no wonder the mask here stands for a dark and ominous power and the room itself might be a cave of a room where black magic is performed. But is that all? Is there any face that does not wear a mask? Masks are sine qua non with any and every face. We hide our joys and we hide our tears. Our faces are never what they are. We wear masks always. Those who exhort us to think positive ask us to put on a smile always. And we pose and pose and often take our poses to be the reality. To put on a smile on the face likens to putting on a mask embodying the lion so that we could be as brave as a lion. But a poet could be different .He could try to know himself.He could try to get rid of his mask and the poses. To that end he must look inward and observe the masks that  obfuscate his true identity. And the poet doffs his mask and hangs it up there on the wall. And once the poet doffs his mask he has no locality or a name. He cannot have any identity. That is why the the  room is empty. The mask alone is there hung up on a wall.But the poets presence in the room could be inferred from the gaze of the mask.When we gaze at something our object of gaze in turn starts gazing at us.We pointed out that the poet gazed at his masks. In turn the mask gazes at the poet. The eye of the mask bores. Does it espy the bodiless. This is a situation when the poets being seeks to find  its own self rid of its accidental attributes.The accidental attributes in turn being eye of the mask  doffed and hung on the wall  has daggers in it that bores. Cold wind accompanies the wrath of the eye and seeks to turn the blood of the poet cold. One wonders whether Lord Buddha had to encounter a similar situation  while seated under the Bodhi Tree in search of enlightenment. Lord Buddha overcame Mara and his minions and so shall the poet we hope.

A Poem by Mai Van Phan in Vietnamese Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text of the Poem

A  ricefield  clear of grasses

A buffalo sleeping deeply

Rice seedlings not yet transplanted

Explication

An instance of word painting in three lines. There is a landscape with inbuilt contrast. There is a ricefield clear of grasses. That indicates that seedlings will be sown there presently.In contrast there is another plot of land where seedlings are still there. But they are ready to be transplanted. There is the readiness of a part of the landscape to receive and readiness on another part of landscape to give. This is a situation dramatic enough.The readers are moved to experience such a scene. Any  situation where someone is ready to give away and where someone is ready to receive has Gods plenty . But  the ricefield which is ready to receive will receive the wealth only to multiply the same thousand fold and distribute  the same among countless hungry men. That is, here is one to receive a gift only  to proliferate the same for the well being of  his or her fellowmen. There is a buffalo sleeping. It speaks of an agriculture where animal energy instead of machine is used. The buffalo ploughs the top soil of the plot of land that shall  receive the seedlings already groomed in the nursery to be transplanted.This might refer to the philosophy of causality.No one event could be the sole cause of another event.To grow paddy, first seedlings have to be grown and then transplanted to another field clear of grass. But this is not all. The field ready to receive the seedling must have its top soil ploughed.And of course the buffalo ploughs it. Thus there are multiple causes behind an event. And of course the scene of a ricefield clear of grasses and a plot of land with seedlings and the buffalo –all of them remind us of a man or  a farmer who is behind all these make- up of Nature.Just as a poet hidden in the privacy of thought sings hymns unbidden till the world is wrought to sympathy with its hopes and fears which it heeded not so does the farmer use the resource of Nature to feed his fellowmen without being seen in the present scene of cultivated Nature.From another standpoint, the figure of the buffalo fast asleep in a landscape where seedlings are ready to be transplanted and the field ready to receive transplantation  evokes in us  a mood of abundance and abandon where rest and work mingle and are identical. A lot of work is already done. A lot of work is yet to be done.But who complains if some rest is taken? Rest is itself a part of work and work is itself a part of rest. The distinction between work and rest is man made. The idyllic scene of the landscape is a criticism of capitalist way of life and production.But this is not all. The scene is stamped with Vietnamese characteristics.Wet paddy cultivation dates back to the Neolithic period. And even today vast tracts of agricultural land could be perhaps seen in the Red River and Mekong delta Dong lua thang canh co bay. Vast agricultural lands where storks can fly with stretched wings. And in the scene depicted in the poem no house building  or factory obstructs our eyes and the land is stretched as far as the eye goes. These paddyscapes are well irrigated by a network of canals developed and these canals  help the farmers to transport their crops from one part of the land to another. And surely ploughing is a sacred event in Vietnam. Earlier the king used to plough the first furrow. And expecting great harvest this first ploughing occasion  is perhaps earmarked with prayers to Tho Dia or the god  of earth as well as Than Nong or the god of agriculture and Than Lua god of rice plants. And there is lot of festivity. So the vast landscape ready for cultivation in  the  poem under perusal is a holy sight full of potential wealth and prosperity.And the buffalo sleeping in that calm of the landscape ready to bring forth wealth is not merely the portrait of a water buffalo.. The buffalo indicates that there is water nearby. And Vietnamese legends tell us that a water buffalo is a cursed angel. The water buffalo  is at least to an extent the image of Vietnam. The Vietnamese people used it to be Sea Game symbol. Their ancestors engraved the figure of a buffalo on many a piece of stone. The buffalo is friendly hard working irrespective of scorching heat or bitter cold. The people of Vietnam are as hardworking and pleasant. The buffalo sleeping in a landscape where the nursery is ready to give away the paddy seedlings and  a vast land ready for receiving, with a buffalo enjoying the situation could put in ones mind that Vietnam is at the door of spectacular  economic development and the present word painting of Mai Van Phans poem could function as the symbol of a Vietnam growing rich and prosperous.

A Poem composed by Jami Proctor Xu explicated

A Poem Composed By Jami Proctor Xu

Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text

Willow

Liu

Two orioles call from the green willow

Two boys cross a river   returning home

A boy slips yellow feather waves beat against weeping branches

Beneath a flurry of orioles

One boy reaches the other shore

Liangge huangli ming cullia

Liu

A line of egrets ascends the blue sky

Aline of words enters into the rivers flow

In green waters a friend searches for a friend

From his mothers window the snow of a thousand autumns

Accumulates on the west peak

Why this need for a body to burn to bury to burn

Liu       flow   liu

Linage huangli ming cuiliu

A line splits in seven directions

A letter a character collides against the stones grey surface

All he finds is his friends face

He carries it in his hands    all he has

 to hand to a mother

the snow of a thousand autumns on the west peak

anchored in the doorway a boat from three thousand miles east

liu to remain to retain to stay

liu to keep

two orioles call from the willow

Explication

The poem opens with the call of birds. Two orioles  call. The orioles are the harbingers of sunshine and summer.The  oriole is associated with the arch angel Auriel who oversees the activities of the nature spirits on earth. The oriole opens up the window through which one could espy the spirits inhabiting nature. The oriole revives the child in man and revives the joy of life. Fairies live in the neighbourhood of orioles . Two orioles may again mean two happinesses The orioles call from the green willow.The willow stands for the moon and psychic powers. It lives near water. It also stands for deserted women . The night Desdemona was murdered she sang a song about a willow . Deserted Ophelia falls from a willow and is drowned. So the call of angels from a willow might give us a preview of  wisdom and joy of life achieved through sorrow.The willow is associated with river. The river could stand for the transitoriness   of the contingent world. Two boys cross the river  returning home while two orioles call from a green willow. One wonders whether the home is situated on the other side of the  transitory world. May be the two boys cross the river to return home at the call of the two orioles.A boy slips. Yellow feather waves beat against weeping branches.So there are weeping willow trees that are associated with tragic deaths. But how could we explain yellow feather waves? The oriole is a bird with yellow or orange plumage .Is the boy who slips  a metaphor for a male oriole  which has yellow plumage of the two orioles in the willow? Or else the sight of the boy slipping stir the orioles whose yellow plumes are reflected on the waves. One boy however reaches the other shore. Does he really cross the world of transitoriness? Liu willow liu.The Chinese word liu could mean many things.But liu is pronounced as leo. And hence liu willow liu could be recited as leo willow leo.So there is an exclamation Oh at the sight of the boy drowned and another boy reaching the other side of the river. Liangge huangli ming cuiliu—two yellow orioles crow between the green willows. A line of silver herons with white plumes ascend the sky. A line of words enters the rivers flow. In green waters a friend searches for a friend. The willows are reflected on the water and hence the water is green. And it is the orioles who observe the happening. While the friend who has crossed the river searches the friend who is drowned one of the orioles see the herons ascending or a path ascending. The word for heron in Chinese lu sounds like the word for path or way.The other oriole finds words entering the flow of the river . In other words the river babbles.Here  words could be the metaphor for the churning of the water by the friend in search of his drowned friend. One who grosses the river of transitoriness seeks to rescue his fellowmen who get drowned in the waters of sorrow. The two birds could be the two selfs in the poet. May be two birds are witnessing the same event. While one interprets the event as crossing of the river another finds the same event as getting drowned in the river. And may be the one interpretation seeks to understand the other. Thus the ambiguity of the world that we perceive is brought home to the readers. While the search continues from his mothers window the snow accumulates on the west peak. Snow stands for death. Accumulated snow might stand for the accumulated archetypes in the collective mind unexplored. Does the story of life and death turn into an archetype in the collective mind? The poet asks what boots it in seeking the dead body.Hasnt the boy who is drowned has got a clean burial a watery burial? the present reader wonders. May be the body is being searched so that it could be buried or burnt. To burn to bury to burn.The earth principle or the water principle or the willow is set between the two ori oles or fire principles The birds or the poet observes a line splitting into seven directions. As soon as Lord Buddha was born he walked seven steps symbolizing seven directions in North South East West  Up Down and Here. The poet in a vision sees how a line splits into the seven directions and space is created and a letter or a character collides against the stones gray surface.In other words language falters or explodes .It is when language fails or beyond s   itself the signified which baffles language or the signifier is realized.All that the friend finds is the face of the drowned body of his friend.In fact it is the face of a man that is most significant.One recognizes by the face.He carries it in his hand all that he has to hand to the mother. And mother is but the accumulated snow or the accumulated experience of existence..Anchored in the doorway of mothers digs is a boat from three thousand miles east—liu liu  t wo orioles cry. East could be  the direction in which the Sun or Eros  rises. And the West could be the direction where Thanatos or the accumulated snow rules.The boat is the transport from Eros to Thanatos. It is anchored in the depth of etenal consciousness. The orioles Eros and Thanatos cry liu liu –keep stay perched in the tree of existence.The poem is thus singularly unique. It is a sequence of symbolic word paintings sucgh as  two birds and a willow tree two boys crossing the river accumulated snow and boat anchored in its neighbourhood.Each symbol is capable of interpretation on many levels and the readers are transported by them from one plane to another. The poem is a triumph of symbolist art where one line is split into seven directions. It opens with two orioles in a willow tree. That is the world in the contingent. The poem transports us to the primordial mother where all consciousness is solidified