By MaiVan Phan
Translated into English by Pompen Hantrakoo
Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya
The sound of a bird dropping on water surface
A fish jumps up
Snatching at a mosquito
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.
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.
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