A poem by Mai Van Phan explicated

A Vietnamese Poem

A Decline of an Evening

Written by Mai Van Phan

Translated into English by Pompen Hantrakool

Explicated by Dr. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

A maiden waded across a stream

The sun went up and down a few times

Then just set

Evening is a crucial hour .The lotus blooms with the sunrise and droops with the advent of evening. A poet says that he will also accompany the drooping daffodils presently after the evening prayers. Another poet observes that the curfew tolls the knell of parting day. And in fact , whatever true and beautiful is said to manifest in the daytime when light reigns supreme. Light  stands for knowledge and truth and love. Evening on the surface seems to bid farewell to whatever true and bright. On another plane evening is the hour when two opposites meet. It can liken a confluence where two streams or rivers meet. When the opposites meet such as matter and antimatter shaking hands it would generate untold or infinite energy  and consequently the whole creation might be destroyed or might vanish into nothingness. The poem dwells on the decline or waning of the evening. The evening gradually looses its power. The title of the poem thus reminds us of a situation when the movement of time is perceptible. During the evening we know the time is running out fast.. And of course the decline of evening reaches us to a moment when day and night mingle In the evening twilight generating a riot of colours. The barred clouds bloom the soft dying day. The twilight is the point of time where life and death meet. It could be like the fine border where the apparel meets the skin. And as Rolland Barthes observes it is here that one might find jouissance . Evening or the fast dying day could be the metaphor of a stream and the stream is very much a metaphor of time that waits for none. And we have a landscape where a stream is rushing only to remind us that the day is dying. And there appears a maiden who wades across that stream. Who could be the maiden? Who could be the person who dares cross time and space? The stream might mean the path of ceaseless sojourn of a person along the road of births and death that is birth, death, birth again and so on A stream might mean the path carved by the fruitions of the activities    of a person in the present life as well as in the countless earlier lives. One wonders who could be the maiden that wades the stream of karmaphala and that of births and deaths.The maiden wades across a stream. And with that the sun goes up and down and up again and down again a few times. In fact while she walks through the water , the water is splashed up and down. With that the Sun reflected on the water goes up and down. This is as it were the last attempts of eros to survive. The Sun seems to take its last chances against the impending doom. Then the Sun just sets.In other words the maiden crosses the stream of sorrow and reaches the shore beyond the sphere of suffering. Thus on a level here is an instance of antipoetry. Traditional poetry lauds the Sun but on a second thought  the Sun illuminates the world of the contingents where nothing is permanent . And we humans are carried off by the ceaseless current of transitory things- the consumer goods in the shopping malls. The stream could be likened to a ceaseless flow of advertisement of consumer goods . And one wonders who could be the woman that can wade through this world of getting and spending, through the transitory images of advertisements exciting our senses and dulling our brains and reach a world beyond the market economy. Wading implies walking in the face of resistance. Desires and objects of desire which are illuminated with the Sun resists the daring steps of the maiden who wades through the water and finally reaches the other side of the stream. With her , the Sun sets suddenly and  she presently vanishes into darkness or the primordial nothingness – the thing in itself which functions as the substructure on which the superstructure of appearance is raised.