Return to Village a Vietnamese Poem Explicated

Return  to the  Village

A Poem composed by Mai Van Phan in Vietnamese

Translted into English by Pompen Hantrakool

Explicated by  Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text

 Return to the Village

A sound of sedge mat weaving

The moon over a river

Slow and slight

Let civilization do whatever it can let urbanization spread its wings man is ever haunted by nostalgia  a longing for returning home or for the village which is the antithesis of town.Town stands for an artificial life. Village stands for a life in close communion with Nature. In the city every man is an island. In the village there is community life.The present poem dwells on  the poets return to village. The poet is everyman who returns to village.He returns to the village .It is night and the Moon is up. Night stands for the disappearance of the world without.Naturally the world within is alight in the Moon . The Moon stands for imagination.While the senses directed  towards the outer world are restrained the imagination in the inner world shows up.The moon is over a river.What does the river stand for?Perhaps  the river stands for eternal flux.But while in the cities the change is fast the river in the village is slow. Changes do take place in villages as well. But they are slow in relation to the changes in the city.But the sound of the flowing river is heard. Mai Van Phan is often the poet of the ear. He has the ear for the sound of the silence too. The river is slow and its murmuring sound is slight and not audible to everyone. Everyone cannot hear the inaudible sound that leaps from the ceaseless changes everywhere in the multiverse. This is the primordial sound the Om that has baffled every interpretation through ages and aeons.The poet Mai Van Phan dares to decode it. With him the sound likens the weaving of sedge mat.Well  Vietnam grows lot  of sedge ,Thousands of people are engaged in weaving sedgemats.The sedgemat is exported to the US Germany and other countries. Thus the sound of weaving sedgemats which is heard in many a village in Vietnam stands for economic activity that could bring peace and prosperity. But this is not all. The bride and bridegroom during their marriage are seated on a sedge mat. Because that will bless them with peace prosperity and fertility. Thus in the primordial sound that runs through the multiverse the poet hears the prophecy of a brave  new Vietnam in the offing and of a brave new world in the making where peace prosperity and economic activity will rule