A Vietnamese Poetry in English Translation Explicated - Mother

MOTHER
Explicated by Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyay


Mum you were in brown during your life

For I could wear a lot of colourful dresses

When I grew up my dad died

Only you took care of us

Your hands were wrinkled

While your children were growing up

Now all of us have partners

Bit you are still alone

Your smile is always kind and gentle

So I think that I am still a little girl in front of you


You are like the deep earth

Which nourishes  flowers and rice for thousand years in silence

This is a poem where a child is the speaker and her mother is the addressee. The child recollects how her father died early and it was the mother who brought up the child. It was the mother who had shouldered all the responsibilities of bringing up her children on her own. She was in brown all along her life. She did not have the time and opportunity for pursuing her desires if any. On the other hand the child or the speaker of the poem could wear a lot of colourful dresses when her mother took care of her. That is  the mother saw to that her children could pursue their fancies under her guardianship. Now that the children are grown up they have found their life partners. The mother need not look after them any more. The child poet feels that the mother is now alone. The child also feels the pangs of separation from her mother. That is why she thinks that her mother is alone. But in her imagination she is still the little girl that she was in front of her mother. And her mother is always kind and gentle. The poem is clinched up with the two lines:

You are like the deep earth

Which nourishes flowers and rice for thousands of years, in silence.

Thus the poem lauds motherhood. The mother has been compared with the deep earth which nourishes flower and rice for thousands of years in silence. She never boasts of her self sacrifice. While flowers stand for the beautiful things in life rice stands for nourishment of the body. The mother also nourishes both body and mind  of a child.

 Let hedonism say what it can, here in this poem the role of a mother has been underlined as the finest manifestation of womanhood. The mother becomes great and noble through her silent sacrifice of the self for the joys and well-being of her child. The child sees the primordial mother in the figure of her own mother. Thus this is a poem holding out the mother cult. The poem is at the same time a hymn to the Earth. Both our mother and our mother earth are in brown and both of them must be looked after and revered. Indeed our dear earth is the only spacecraft in which we men and women can live and multiply. And even in our old age the mother is our solace . We imagine that we are still little children in front of our mother.       

        

A Vietnamese Poetry in English Translation Explicated - Love

Love

By Phan Thi Thanh Nhan

Translated by Tho Phan Thi Thanh Nhan
Explicated by Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyay

You have another girlfriend

She is more beautiful and younger than me

She is also coddled and fondled

Like you used to treat me as ever


I could not understand although thinking for a long time

My unreasonable faithfulness

Why I cannot love anyone not you


But you spit on our past

And you forgot all of our bitterness and miserableness

Why I am still thinking about our old days

And think that you never change


I am still waiting for you

And thinking that you cannot forget me

Although she is more beautiful and younger than me

You released me but still there a new wound

Change is the category of life. Impermanence is the only truth lurking behind the show of things. And yet emotions such as love can not admit of the reality that it is change which characterizes the way of the world. The poem ‘Love’ by Phan Thi Thanh Nhan is a sweet ditty where a deserted lover casts a longing lingering look into her past. She still thinks about her past when she was cuddled and fondled by her sweetheart. She thinks that her sweet heart has not changed even today despite the fact that her sweetheart at this moment is engaged with a girl who is more beautiful and younger than her. The deserted lover says that she is still waiting for her beloved to turn up. True that she has been deserted by her sweetheart but the wounds of love still linger at her heart and the deserted lover thinks that her beloved one has also love for her at his heart even today despite the fact that he coddles and fondles a girl younger and more beautiful than her. The speaker, that is, the deserted lover tries to understand why she is still fond of the man who deserted her. It seems to her that there is an unreasonable faithfulness in her. That is why she cannot love anyone else than the person whom she loved once and whom she lost in course of time. Thus the poem enshrines constancy of love. Love does not admit of any change. The emotion of love baffles explanation.

A Vietnamese Poetry in English Translation Explicated - The Road

The RoadBy Phan Thi Thanh Nhan
Translated by Tho Phan Thi Thanh Nhan
Explicated by Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyay

If you go with your darling just remember a small thing

The road we used to walk on

Please dont go there with another one, not me

The trees are growing faster now

The branches are longer for their leaves to have soft touch

Both of us who knows why

Turn far far away on the separated roads 

If you go for a new darling

Please avoid our first happy road

Emotions such as love and affection are inevitable with human heart. The poem entitled ‘The Road’ is an instance of the same. It is a simple poem depicting wounded love. The poem is a kind of dramatic monologue uttered in the parole of a woman. Since it is a monologue the speaker who is a woman is thinking aloud. The addressee who is a man might be present before her. And again he might not be there. The speaker addresses a man with whom she was engaged earlier. Right now they are separated and far away from each other. The speaker believes that the man, her erstwhile lover, has now taken fancy on another woman. The speaker tells her erstwhile lover that love if he  must another girl but for goodness’s sake he must not go with his new love along the path trodden by the speaker and himself:

The road we used to walk on
Please don’t go there with another one

It raises a problem with us who overhear the speaker thinking aloud. Why should not the man walk along the same road which was pursued by him during his first love? Does the speaker mean that the man must not betray his new love the way he had betrayed his first love, that is, the speaker. But the second stanza of the poem says nope to such doubts. The lady says that neither she and nor her erstwhile lover knows why they were separated from each other:

Both of us, who knows why, 
Turn far away on the separated roads.

This is a singularly unique kind of parole different from the parole of the lovers in literature. While the lovers blame one another for separation between them, if any, here is a deserted lover who does not blame her counterpart for the separation of hers from her counterpart. Thus she debunks causality or rather her vocabulary does not have the notion of cause and effect. Everything is random in the multiverse. The behavior of an electron is random at bottom. Or else, no one cause can explain an event. Here we must invoke Pratitya samutpattivada to explain any event whatever. Since the speaker does not blame her counterpart for getting separated from her the poem speaks of love for everybody or metta of Buddhist lore. She however forbids her erstwhile lover from taking his new love along the road which the speaker and he had trodden earlier. Because

The trees are going faster now
The branches are longer for their leaves to have soft touch

The above lines show that the path earlier trodden by the speaker and her counterpart was a path through a sylvan environment laden with trees. The speaker tells her counterpart that those trees have grown taller than ever. The branches have been longer in the mean time. Their soft leaves are time and again. And the erstwhile lover of the speaker must not destroy that growing natural environment bordering the road taken earlier by trodding the same path with his new lady love. This is a unique imagery. On one level it speaks of ruralisation as opposed to urbanization. Judged on the whetstone of eco-criticism the above two lines are superb because they tell us that Nature must not be polluted and contaminated. Rather we should let Nature grow in her elements. The trees should grow tall the branches should be long their leaves should be soft. The tree is a value here. We can feel the touch of the leaves. Or another plane however true love should go back to Nature to find its consummation. The English poet Wordsworth tells us that when he was amidst Nature with his wife Mary Hutchinson he could put a garland around her neck. Because a man and woman can be in their elements only  amidst Nature.  The poem is singularly unique because it focuses on the  road and does not give that much importance to the travellers along the road. The conflict  between the lovers is not taken into account. But the importance of the road of love has been brought to the foreground. On another level one wonders where the road is. The road exists very much in the mind of the speaker. The trees and the branches have grown only after the lovers are separated from each other. Thus love seems to have its efflorescence only when the lovers are separated from each other. It is only through separation from the loved ones that lovers can feel the love for the loved one in its full manifestation. This is a paradox. But paradoxes are the stuff with which the finest poems are forged. The branches, the speaker says, are longer for their leaves to have soft touch. In other words the experience of the  life's journey with a loved one  passing into memory becomes taller with longer branches with leaves longing for soft touches. The speaker says that the memories of her journey with her counterpart should be remembered with kindness and compassion. One wonders whether this poem itself  is a leaf from the tree of love that has grown taller and that has stretched its branches  in the mind of the speaker in course of the time since her separation from her sweetheart. Any experience that sinks into the mind grows like the plant and could be transformed into poetry. And of course such leaves, such branches or such love poems that spring from emotions recollected should be perused by the readers with love and tenderness.

A Vietnamese Poetry in English Translation Explicated - Blossom Season

Blossom Season

By Y Phuong
Translated by Nhue Anh dich
Explicated by Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyay

Season of blossom

Season of women

Ruddy faces

Running like a wind to the mountains, carrying their husbands on their shoulders

Season of Blossom

Season of men

Becoming tired out like a gloomy shirt

Passing by, sleepily leaning on fences

The poem juxtaposes two contrasting visions. In the first stanza a season of blossom brings forth a time when it is the women who are the protagonists. The poet finds healthy red faces running like the wind to the mountain, carrying their husbands on their shoulders. The mountain seems to stand for perennial happiness that is not subject to decay or death. The second stanza depicts another season of blossom when it is the men who are the protagonists.  While the women are ruddy faces the men are like gloomy shirts.  In another words they are mere apparitions or ghosts whose shirts are only visible. While the women run like the wind to the mountains the men pass by sleepily leaning on fences. In other words there is death in life in the figures of men whereas there is life in death in  the ruddy faces of women. The latter are alight with zest for love and life. They are  carrying their husbands on their shoulders. Here family is a legitimation. The women are observing their family responsibility with love. They were looking forward to transport their loved ones to the heights of peace and happiness. But the men are unimaginative. They have no vision. They have no goal in life. They stand for thanatos. They are too self centred and too tired to think of their fellow men. Thus while women stand for the Eros or love and energy indomitable, the men stand for Thanatos or matter , dead and inert.  

This is a poem that impels us to look upon life, men and women from an emergent point of view. 

A Vietnamese Poetry in English Translation Explicated - Oh Stone

Oh Stone         

By Nguyen Duy.
Translated by Kenin Bowen and Nguyen Ba Chung
Explicated by Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyay

I stand in meditation before Ankors ruins

If stone can be so shattered what of human life?

Oh stone

let me inscribe a plea for peace


In the end in every war

Whoever won the people always lost

Ankor Bhat is one of the greatest temple towns on the earth and a world heritage site.  The main temple here is the Vishnu temple. The temple is famed to be the symbol of the Mount Meru which is the stay of the universe and impregnable. Besides Lord Vishnu is looked upon as the preserver of the multiverse. The poet stands before it and is lost in meditation. Ankor Bhat is in ruins. It is the ruins that impel the poet to meditate. The stone is deemed to be the most firm thing under the sun. The ruins of Ankor Bhat show that even stone can be shattered. If a piece of stone and a stone built temple could crumble down there is no surprise that we  witness human life is destroyed or put out of joints. The poet compares human life with a stone built temple. Compared with the life time of a temple the life time of a man is literally ephemeral. And yet do we not think that a human body however ephemeral is also as sacred as a temple? And it is a pity that all sacred things are tumbling down in front of our eyes. May be the Buddhist notion of impermanence is winking at the readers through the second line of the poem : 

 If stone can be shattered what of human life? 

Despite the fact that nothing is permanent in the existence the poet seeks to inscribe a plea for peace. Here we espy the portrait of Buddha silhouetted with ironical words. Though Lord Buddha knew that nothing is permanent in the world yet he sought to inscribe a plea for peace and love on the rocks of existence. The poet seeks to inscribe his plea on the stone so that it might linger for quite a long time But on another level does not the stone stand for a stony heart cruel and sans any love for fellow men? Just as Lord Buddha sought to inscribe his message in  every stony heart so does the poet seek to inscribe the language of love and peace on the cruel hearts of his time and of times to come.The poet addresses the stone and thereby dares address the cruel hearts and asks for their leave to inscribe the message of love in them. Because the poet full well knows that the cruel practices will  go on through all futurity. The poem ends with the two sad lines:

In the end in every war 

whoever won, the people always lost.

That is a lesson of history. Kings and princes and Presidents of the countries are ever engaged in vying with one another. Battles are lost and battles are won . But the lot of the common man ever remains the same sans hope.  Thus the poem is apparently weighed down with pessimism and sadness. the poet however feels that the  message of peace and love needs to be chanted over and  over again.

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.

A Vietnamese Poetry in English Translation Explicated - Do Leon

Do Leon

By Nguyen Duy 
Translated by Nguyen Do and Paul Hoover
Explicated by Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

In my childhood I went to Na Bridge to fish

pulled my grandmothers skirt going to the Binh Lam flea market

caught sparrows in the ears of Buddhist sculptures

and sometimes stole eye dragon fruit at the Tran pagoda



In my childhood I played in the Cay Thi temple

and barefoot in darkness to watch the Song temples ceremony

The odor of white lily mixed with aloe wood smoke was delicate

The sorceress shadow staggered in the van melody


I didnt realize how miserable my grand mother was

She groped for crabs and skimmed for shrimps at Dong Quan

She carried green tea leaves to sell at Ba Trai

Quan Chao and Dong Giao; her shadow tottered on cold nights.



I was solid crystal between the real and the unreal

my grandmother and fairies Buddhists and saints

These were starving years the dong boiled but not yet done

Why did its smell  seem like white lily and aloe wood perfume?


America bombed my grand mothers house blew away

Song temple exploded blowing down other temples and pagodas

Saints and Buddhists were committed to leaving together

My grand mother went to sell eggs at Ken train station


I had been in the armya long time and never returned to my grand mothers home

As one riverbank increases the other decreases

When I realised I loved her it was too late

My grandmother now lies in a grass covered grave

The speaker in this poem recollects his childhood. As a child he went to the Na Bridge to fish. He used to cling to his grandmother’s skirt and go to the flea market where second hand articles are bought and sold. He played in the temple premises. He went bare foot in the dark on an evening to watch the ceremony at the Song temple. There aloe wood and lily were burnt. The child enjoyed the incense. And may be mantras were chanted there. The melody of the mantras seemed to dispel every evil omen. The child could see a sorceress staggering as it were.

Now on hindsight the child who has now grown up into a man can realize how poor his grandmother was. She used to catch crabs and shrimps for her living.  She carried green tea leaves to sell at the market. Her shadow tottered on the cold nights.

Recollecting these vignettes of childhood the speaker says that he was a solid crystal as it were between the two world’s one of the fairies and another which was real. Both the worlds reflected on him but he could not full well understand their import. In course of time America bombed and the grandmother’s house was blown away. Temples and pagodas crumbled. The saints and their Buddhist followers were scattered. The grand mother went to sell eggs at a railway station. In the mean time the speaker joined the army and never returned to his grandmother’s home but childhood memories lingered. The poem closes with the two lines:

When I realized I loved her, it was too late

My grandmother now lies in grass covered grave.

The poem is loaded with a bunch of proper names such as Na Bridge, Tran Pagoda, Cay Thi temple, Song temple, Dong Quan, Quan Chao, Dong Gia and Len train station. There is a symphony of proper names. It creates a strange land in the mind’s eye of the reader who does not belong to Vietnam. The poet makes this strange world vivid by way of touching upon some particulars. We can visualize how incense was being burnt at Song temple’s ceremony and how eye dragon fruits abounded at the Tran temple. It was indeed an idyllic landscape littered with temples and pagodas. They were in the main Buddhist shrines. Lord Buddha himself stands for peace and love.

But a landscape littered with temples and pagodas is not enough. There must be human touch about them. The temple campuses were playgrounds for children. The speaker remembers how he sometimes stole eye dragon fruits there.

The little child who sauntered in the temple campuses also clung to the skirt of his grandmother and went to the flea market. He also went with his grandmother to catch fish.

Thus, the portrait of the grandmother becomes vivid before our eyes. She used to take her grandchild along with her while doing her daily economic activities.  In his innocence the little child did not understand that they were very poor.

But the peaceful landscape did not last for long. America bombed. The temples and pagodas were razed to the ground. This is not all. The shelter of the grandmother was also blown up. In the mean time the child grew into a man. As a man he joined the army to defend his motherland against the aggressors. He was then away from his grandmother. But he could now realize how poor his grandmother was.

It seems that the poem is a parody of  Wordsworth’s famous poem ‘The Daffodils’. In his poem The Daffodils, Wordsworth chanced upon a host of daffodils dancing along the margin of a lake. The poet says:

I gazed and gazed but little thought

what wealth the show had to me brought.

Later when the poet was lying in a pensive mood the daffodils flashed upon his inward eye which was the bliss of solitude.  But here the vignettes of childhood recurred in the grown up speaker’s mind and the speaker now realized how poor his grandmother was.

The poem could draw the attention of the feminists. The speaker unlike the rest of us does not dwell on his father or grandfather as the bread earner. Here is a narrative where a grandmother is a protagonist. True that, the grandmother had been very poor and she had to catch fish and go to the market to sell them. But Time did not let her remain in that state. She was flung from the frying pan to fire. Her house was shattered. She had to shift from her usual economic activities to sell eggs at a railway station.

Recollections are not always pleasant.  In his thoughtless childhood the speaker did not understand whether his grandmother was rich or poor. When he was grown up he understood that his grandmother was poor. Thereafter a period of starvation followed. In his thoughtless childhood the speaker could not understand whether he loved his grandmother or not. But the grown up speaker by way of recollecting his past found that he loved her.  But the grandmother is no longer there. She is now in the grave. Wonderful reticence speaks volumes here. Firstly let us be focused on the child. With a child the antinomies do not exist. He cannot distinguish poverty from riches. He cannot distinguish between love from hatred. He is all love. But this world of childhood is shattered with age. While a child is more enveloped by sensations, with age one is more occupied with perceptions. While a child is more at the receiving end, a grown-up constructs the past by decoding his experiences.

There are of course villains and evil forces that shatter this idyllic world of childhood. America bombed and the world was out of joints. But that was not all. The real antagonist is Time. The grandmother at the outset catching crabs and later selling eggs becomes a tragic figure fighting onslaughts of Time without yielding to it.

One wonders whether the grandmother is the symbol of the earlier days of Vietnam itself . Ravages of war destroyed her. The speaker as well has been continuing his battle for life. 

The poem also depicts a conflict between times past and times present. The poem has been a perfect pattern through its recurrences and variations. In the temple the little child saw in his imagination a sorceress staggering in the smoke. It was the evil. It was being driven away by the rituals in the temple. Ironically enough, the same smoke and the odour showed up with bombing that proves that the sorceress had not really died during the temple rituals. And one wonders whether the rituals and the temples are at all of any avail? And yet do we not long to get back the landscape loud with temple bells and mantras?

Thus the poem is itself as hard as crystal where numerous emotions mingle into a solid that baffles analysis.

A Vietnamese Poetry in English Translation Explicated - Dalat -- Once with the Moon

Dalat – Once with the Moon
By Nguyen Duy Nhue

Translated by Nguyen Do and Paul Hoover
Explicated by Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyay

A Magical moon flickers in white fog

Whose wind flickers over the hills ?

The crunching sound of horse’s hoofs beat on the silent slope

A pine leaf faintly and dimly falls

You light a camp stove with tiny pieces of dry wood

The flame covers the emptiness between you and me

I avoid looking at you; you avoid looking at me

While our little teapot mumbles as it boils

But finally nothing is avoided

In their heart these wooden coals burn at their reddest

But their flame pretends to glimmer

And the odor of sap follows the drifting smoke.

The poem opens with a magical moon. Magical moon implies a moon that is different from the silver orb which we are wont to see in the blue deep. One wonders why it becomes magical moon. The next word- flickers- seems to resolve the problem. It is though very much the moon we are used to see in the nocturnal sky yet unlike the moon of every night it flickers. The moon is the lamp of the nightly sky. It gives light steadily but right now the moon light flickers or shines unsteadily. This makes the moon magical. One wonders whether the moon has been transformed into a magical one and whether the moon exerts some charm upon the world. Surely the moon of the poem does not shine in a clear sky. It flickers in white fog. In other words the moon could be at its full and yet it looks magical and different as because it shines from behind white fog. The English romantic poet par excellence Coleridge portrays a similar moon shining from behind a thin grey cloud-let that makes the moon both small and dull. Thus an eerie atmosphere is created. But here the moon shines behind a white fog. That is, the moon hides itself in a veil of light. It seems that truth is hidden in a veil of light. What does the veil stand for ? it might be the light of thought. The moon could be the poet hidden in the light of thought. But the poet’s self despite hiding himself in the light of thought shines forth in flickers penetrating the white fog. That is the paradox. Despite the fact that a poet hides himself behind a poem the poem could reveal the poet in flashes. This is an aesthetics. Roland Barths in his famous article “The Death ofan Author’ announces that the author is dead. His illustrious predecessors Nietzsche announced earlier that the God is dead but Nguen Duy seems to argue that just as we do not espy god in the creation and still just as god reveals himself in the creation similarly although we do not see the poet in a poem the poem betrays now and then in flickers the real self of the poet. Indeed a magical moon flickers in white fog. But how come the light of the moon becomes unsteady? The light of a lamp flickers when it is unsteady. What makes the light of the lamp unsteady? It is because of the wind that the lamp becomes unsteady. If the wind sometimes is strong and sometimes weak the light of the lamp becomes unsteady. And one might say the wind itself flickers. This is a case of metonymy. The poet asks – whose wind flickers over the hills?  While the magical moon flickers in white fog in the sky. Away over the hills the wind flickers. Thus here is  a nocturnal landscapes flickering in the moon. And therefrom we find the winds over the hills. Thus an un- earthy atmosphere is created. The flicker of the moon light and the flicker of the wind seem to be in unison with the crunching sound of horses hoofs that beat on the silent slopes. In other words, there are beats of lights and there are beats of sounds. Each beat of the sound underlies the silence. Each flicker of light could underline darkness. Thus the light and sound of the scene underlies the darkness and silence lurking behind. The fourth line of the poem reads – a pine leaf faintly and dimly falls. The fricative f here recurs only to remind us of the dryness or saplessness of the leaf. We can as it were hear the fall of a single sapless leaf. The sound only enhances the silence all about.

The next stanza begins with – you light a camp stove with tiny pieces of dry wood. The line suggests the existence of a camp in the afore described magical environment. The magical environment is being observed  and felt by the poet who is staying in a camp in the magical environment. And the poet is not alone in the camp because he addresses someone who lights a stove with tiny pieces of dry wood. The cooking gadgets do not exist in a camp. This shows that the poet is away from the comforts of his hearth and home. The stove is alighted and the flame covers the emptiness between the poet and his company. Earlier the stove was not alight. So even though the poet and his company were seated near each other both of them were left alone given to their thoughts. But now that the stove is alight the flame bridges the gap between the poet and his friend. The flame in other words is a substitute for language that connects two discrete humans. Each others face could be descried in the light of the flame. But the poet avoids looking at his friend despite the fact that right now he could see his friends face. Why does the poet avoid to look at his friend? May be the friends face might reveal some impending disaster which the poet seeks to avoid to look upon. In other words, we the readers of the poem are afraid that some ominous incident is in the offing. The poet avoids looking at  the friend and the friend avoids looking at the poet while the teapot mumbles as it boils. The mumble of the teapot only enhances the silence which pervades the whole atmosphere.

         The third stanza seems to clinch up the drama which informs us that finally nothing is avoided. In their heart the wooden coals burn . But their flames pretend to glimmer. It reminds us of the flicker of the magical moon in white fog and the flickers of the wind over the hills. This refrain of the imagery of flicker adds to the poem a mold of music. The poet adds that the odour of sap follows  the drift in smoke. The Nyaya philosophers of ancient India observes that we could infer that the hill is afire observing a smoke surrounding a hill. The hush-hush atmosphere in the camp  amidst the flicker of moon light and the sound of the horses hoofs from afar seem to suggest a situation where a tremendous fearsome disaster or encounter might take place . The poem is a triumph of symbolic art. It evokes a sense of fear and an occult silence in the hearts of the readers.