Phan Hong Khanh, poet passionate about the soul of the countryside

...And I saw an island once

cry

Because of loneliness in the middle of the sea

and the sky

I thought the island was sullen.

grit

Who would have thought the island was also weak-hearted...

I don't know where I read the poem "Deserted Island" by Phan Hong Khanh and silently thanked the author for speaking for me during the most difficult days of my family... Then, one time in Vinh, I met the author of "Deserted Island".

During the subsidy period, poet Tuyet Nga and her husband were staying in a room of the Nghe Tinh Literature and Arts Association on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street (Vinh City). I knew Tuyet Nga through the times she visited the literary and artistic community in Hue, so every time I went to Vinh, I would visit and eat at Tuyet Nga's house. That day, many Vinh literary and artistic community gathered at Tuyet Nga's house, and they were drinking and reading poetry. I saw a man with a goatee, a face exactly like a Westerner, always smiling on the wine mat. One of them shouted: "Phan Hong Khanh, read your poetry." When he stood up, I realized that "the Westerner" was Phan Hong Khanh. What haunted me the most was that Phan Hong Khanh did not read his poetry right away, but he reached out and pulled out three incense sticks from Tuyet Nga's altar. He lit a match and put them in a glass of water in the middle of the wine mat. The incense smoke rose up in a blue sky. Then he knelt down, bowed three times, and muttered something unclear, his face solemn and respectful, like a person praying:

Carry the dry and thirsty burden we go

Thirst makes the throat bitter, dryness burns the liver

What can quench my thirst?

Well, let the wine overflow...

Phan Hong Khanh (standing row, 3rd from right) in 1984 with Nghe An artists. Photo: Document

Then he continued reading three more six-eight poems. “...Then the starling crossed the river/ Letting its song touch the heart of the people!/ Then the duckweed drifted and the clouds drifted/ Tears soaked the hem of the shirt, the hat fell at the foot of the bridge/ Where was the red scarf and the red bib/ The areca nut was split, the betel leaf was wrapped…” I sat and listened in amazement. This was the first time I had heard poetry in the midst of such sacred incense smoke. And how could a man with such a fierce beard and “Western” appearance write six-eight poems so skillfully, smoothly, rustically and affectionately? After listening to Phan Hong Khanh read the poem, I took the initiative to shake his hand and sincerely complimented his skillful six-eight poems. He smiled and said: “It’s not poetry, I write to enjoy life!”

After that first meeting, I asked Tuyet Nga and the poetry-loving sculptor Dao Phuong, and learned more about Phan Hong Khanh's difficult life. And his story made me admire him even more. He was indeed the son of a Frenchman. In Vinh, people called Phan Hong Khanh Khanh Tay. His father was a French officer named De Moredin. In 1940, this officer fell in love and became engaged to Mrs. Phan Thi Tuc. The two held a proper wedding. Four years later, in early 1944, Mrs. Tuc gave birth to her first son, who was of French and Vietnamese blood. Before he could register his son's birth, Mr. De Moredin was transferred back to his country.

It is not known whether he was sick or had some misfortune that prevented him from returning to Vietnam to find his wife and children. Until his death, Phan Hong Khanh still had not been able to contact his French father. Mrs. Tuc waited for her husband, but there was no sign of him. A year later, she made a birth certificate for her son, naming him Phan Hong Khanh, with his mother's surname. Due to the difficult circumstances of having to "remarry", the Western child with his mother's surname was not yet two years old when his mother sent him to an acquaintance in a remote mountainous area. Phan Hong Khanh grew up alone, without the warmth of his parents. Those years were confided in him in the poem "Please don't ask about my childhood" that: "...My childhood forgot the sunshine"... Later, his mother remembered to redeem him to return to Vinh to study. Was the poetic nature, the love for people and life imbued in Phan Hong Khanh formed from those difficult days?

According to the introduction of the editors of the Phan Hong Khanh Poetry collection, “Phan Hong Khanh once participated in the youth volunteer force, fought for many years in fierce key areas, and later became a truck driver.” Those days in the forest were left in his poems with beautiful images:

The forest is still in our memories

Time - leaves - red Truong Son mountain wind rushing

Forest lingers in meals and sleep

Who named the young forest, the old forest?

(Song of the Forest)

In the 70s, Phan Hong Khanh fell in love with Phuc, his current wife. He wrote many poems for Phuc. The couple had two children together, named Viet and Nam. That means Phan Hong Khanh always had a hidden pain in his heart, a sense of inferiority, and was afraid that people would look at him with suspicion, that he was not Vietnamese. So he wrote six-eight verses, using many folk songs, many from the Vietnamese countryside: "Every morning, I have a new eggplant meal/ With stinking shrimp, fragrant deer/ Every time summer comes/ With good friends, good wine" (Missing you), and then he named his child after the name of the Motherland! That means he did everything spiritually and wholeheartedly to prove to everyone that he was a child of the motherland Vietnam. It was not until he was 40 that he returned to live with his family. Due to the lack of family affection since childhood, Phan Hong Khanh loved his wife and children very much. His wife, Phuc, worked hard to make a living, and many late nights she still hadn’t returned. He wrote a poem for his wife: “Why haven’t you come home yet at night? Is the stream blocking your way? It’s raining heavily on the mountain this season. My heart can’t help but worry… (Poem for you)

Phan Hong Khanh wrote many poems, many people know his poems by heart because of their simple language and profound ideas and emotions. He was awarded the Nguyen Du Prize, the biggest Literature Prize of Nghe An for poetry in 1995, but he did not have the money to print his poems. All his life, he always wished to have a book of poems published, but he could not do so. When Phan Hong Khanh passed away, in front of his coffin, his wife, Ms. Phuc, cried and said: "Because I do not have the money to print a separate book of poems for you as you wished, I will photocopy your poems into many copies and scatter them instead of votive paper on the road to your eternal resting place." And Ms. Phuc did exactly that. How touching and how romantic. And how true to the life and character of poet Phan Hong Khanh. Poetry is the sacred realm of the human soul, it must be burned in gold, must be read in the smoke of incense, must be scattered along the coffin to the grave!

In 2002, the poet and his family gathered their writings, earned money, and printed a collection of Phan Hong Khanh's Poetry, consisting of 90 poems. The collection of poems was printed beautifully and luxuriously. Sculptor Dao Phuong in Vinh sent me a copy in Hue. Reading the collection "Hong Khanh's Poetry", I learned more about his emotional range and his talented features in his poetry. Reading the poems, I saw that Phan Hong Khanh's words were concise and full of human love and friendship. He cried for a friend who had just passed away: "What is the purpose of the green grass? That it is so green, the green grass..." He was full of the lingering features of "Sad Afternoon":

The afternoon lingers in my heart

A few patches of sunlight can't keep up with the afternoon

That's all, don't wish for much.

Also give me enough love for life.

Feeling like that, loving like that is very Zen, very poetic, 100% poetic. One must have an extremely sensitive “soul antenna” to catch the fragile, delicate “two or three patches of sunlight” in that afternoon. Phan Hong Khanh’s poetry is also deeply philosophical about life. He has a series of poems written about famous people or friends who have passed away, each poem is deeply painful, with a profound philosophy of life. Paying tribute to 63-year-old photographer Van Dong, he wrote: “Those six or three years are enough / The howling rain and wind are willing to play with me / Play with friends of life and death / Play with people who have meaning and love!”

In September 2002, I returned to Vinh just in time for the flood that engulfed the two provinces of Nghe An and Ha Tinh. I asked poet Nguyen Dang Viet to take me to burn incense at Phan Hong Khanh's grave. The road to the cemetery was so deep that I couldn't get in, so I had to stand and watch from afar. Dang Viet took me back to visit Ms. Phuc and to burn incense at Mr. Khanh's altar. Viet forgot the way, and the two of us searched and asked for a long time before we got home. Unfortunately, Ms. Phuc and the children were all away. So I put the card in the bag of offerings and hung it on the gate of his house, writing a few words asking Ms. Phuc to burn incense for Mr. Khanh. When I left, I remembered:

Khanh Tay, oh Khanh Tay

What did you do wrong?

Live with roots

Why do I have to suffer this?

His poem: That's all, I don't wish for much/ Just give myself enough love for a lifetime...

Ngo Minh