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 also told me once that childhood in the countryside is very important, when childhood memories fade away, it is also 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 closed the look

Take me back to my 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 called grandmother:

The wanderer in everyday life

Live anywhere, no place can be home

And my homeland is still at the end of the horizon

I haven't 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 so many years as if it were just yesterday. This is the image of my sister-in-law, the person I call Mu (aunt):

Thinking of you 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 sat with misty eyes

Wear a hat and carry a basket across her garden.

Those are the 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 10 years old when he started first grade. Mr. Thach Quy told me that if the situation continued, he might be illiterate! Sometimes the truth is so simple that no one knows 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 obscured 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 memories of their childhood. And I know that on every road in the country, no matter what position they hold, Quy mountain will always be in the hearts of the people in my village.

Quy mountain is small but has so many rocks.

The age of herding cows in the 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 cliff of cotton

Remember each other for life.

Just reading these few lines 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-hearted 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

Leisurely stroll to greet each rice plant

The fish sniffed the muddy footprints in surprise.

Round eyes surprised to recognize me.

You see, the love of the countryside in 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. Thach Quy's poems are exceptionally soft because they are filled with emotion:

Our sky is blue, who can not see it?

It is very green from the autumn season

One morning the clouds rose, one afternoon the wind rose

A sky of colors mixed in poetry

My village, a normal village, nothing that attracts you much. Yet it is the birthplace of poetic souls. Some people say that the reason my hometown, my village has many people writing poetry 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 had memorized them by heart when he was a toddler, did he understand at that time?

We only now have a Nguyen Tieu day dedicated to poetry. But my family had that day perhaps almost 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 on that day. On poetry nights like that, not only relatives but sometimes people from miles away come to listen...

Wang Qiang

(Hanoi)