Poetry village on Quy mountain

(Baonghean) - My village is a purely agricultural village, as the saying goes, because apart from farming, there are no other crafts. It took me several decades to be able to stay at home for a week. Once, poet Vuong Trong told me that he spent three times as much time in Hanoi as he did in his hometown, yet everything he wrote started from his hometown.

Everything in my hometown is beautiful, even though my mind knows that my hometown does not have Ngoc Son Temple or The Huc Bridge... Mr. Thach Quy once told me that childhood in the countryside is very important, when childhood memories fade away, it is difficult to write. What he wrote was thanks to the days of herding buffalo, cutting grass, catching bees, and picking blackberries on the top of Quy mountain.

A corner of My Thanh village - Yen Thanh. Photo: Ho Cac

Now, I am returning to my hometown, after many years away. On the way to the village, Uncle Vuong Trong's poems keep coming back to me with each step and my tears naturally fall:

When my eyes close the look

Take me back to the birthplace

My village is small, the entrance to the village is also small.

Cars returning must stop at the main road.

Readers may love many other lines and poems, because Vuong Trong's poetry has been flying high for decades. But for me, the lines of poems that Uncle Vuong Trong wrote about his hometown moved me the most. This is the poem he wrote to remember his mother, the person I call grandmother:

Wandering around in everyday life

Live anywhere, no place can be home

And my homeland is at the end of the horizon

I have not been home much since my mother left.

It seems like nothing profound, the words are not new, but they have been engraved in my heart for many years as if it were just yesterday. This is the image of my sister-in-law, the person I call Mu (aunt):

Thinking about it makes me feel so sorry for my sister-in-law.

Rainy afternoon, out of rice, mother in pain at the end of the bed

I sit with misty eyes

Take off your hat and carry your basket across her garden.

Those are unvarnished realities, the years when my Vuong family fell into crisis due to a historical mistake. Uncle Vuong Trong became famous through poetry, but who knew that he was only able to attend first grade at the age of 10. Brother Thach Quy told me that if the situation continued, he might become illiterate! Sometimes the truth is so simple that no one knows it because it seems to no longer exist. And when he went to school, he was the smartest student from when he was a child until he studied at the University of General Mathematics. Uncle Vuong Trong was especially good at Mathematics and Foreign Languages. I often hid under his shadow. In meetings with friends, especially writers and poets, I was often given a note when introduced as "my nephew Vuong Trong, my younger brother Thach Quy". Although I was overshadowed by those two shadows, I was not sad and to some extent, I was a little proud. I tried not to be intimidated.

From afar I saw Quy Mountain, where everyone in my village had childhood memories. And I know that on every road in the country, no matter what position you hold, Quy Mountain will always be in the hearts of the people in my village.

Quy mountain is small but has so many rocks

Age of herding cows in rock shelter from the rain

Broom flowers fall under the wings of wasps

White rocks exposed to the midday sun.

And here is the grass:

Childhood weeds

Tiny purple flowers

The whole mountain cliff

Remember each other for life.

Just reading these few verses is enough to see that Thach Quy's poetry has two interwoven elements: my hometown childhood and a rock-solid soul. Many people think that Thach Quy is tough and stubborn, but they are wrong. Simple people often only see the surface, and Thach Quy's external image makes many people think so. In fact, as far as I know, no one is as soft and rich in soul as he is. When we meet, Thach Quy and I often talk until morning. A vast soul, brilliant knowledge and a dialectical perspective!

Still in my hometown, still in the afternoon on the village fields, Mr. Thach Quy goes to enjoy the breeze:

Clear water, full snakehead fish

Stroll leisurely to greet each rice plant

The fish sniffed the muddy footprints in amazement.

Floating eyes round bewildered recognize me.

You see, the love of the countryside in Mr. Thach Quy's poems is so vivid and poetic. It is from my hometown, the blue sky of my hometown that has nurtured a beautiful soul, kindling the flame of love forever until now. Mr. Thach Quy's poems are exceptionally soft because they are filled with emotion:

Our sky is blue, who can not see?

It is very green from the autumn season

One morning the clouds rose, one afternoon the wind rose

A sky of color mixed in poetry

My village, an ordinary village, nothing that attracts you much. Yet it is the birthplace of poetic souls. Some people say that the reason why my hometown, my village has many poets is because during the resistance war against the French, my village was a free zone. The most famous writers, poets, and musicians of Vietnam such as Che Lan Vien, Luu Trong Lu, Xuan Dieu, Thanh Tinh, Nguyen Van Ty... came to live and passed on the flame of love for literature to the young generation, including Vuong Trong and Thach Quy. I think that is not wrong. But who knows that Uncle Vuong Trong's father used to take his children for a walk in the village and read Truyen Kieu or Chinh Phu Ngam in Chinese characters and Uncle Vuong Trong could already recite it by heart when he was a toddler. I wonder if he understood it at that time?

We only now have the Lantern Festival for Poetry. But my family had that day perhaps half a century ago. On the night of January 14, my family has been worshiping our ancestors for 250 years. On nights like that, when the worshiping of our ancestors is over, there is usually a poetry reading program. Calling it a program seems incorrect because it is often spontaneous and natural, without any preparation. Especially when Uncle Vuong Trong comes home that day. On poetry nights like that, not only relatives but sometimes people from miles away come to listen...

Wang Qiang

(Hanoi)