Reading Tran Sang's poem - "Time is a repeating cycle"

Poetry collection "Follow the flow" by poet Tran Sang.

I was impressed with this collection of poems right from the first poem, titled “Circle”. The poem has the following passage: “Time is a repeating circle/ I revolve in the days/ I keep going and one day I will meet/ myself who is lost today”.

From that emotion, I read and feel Tran Sang's poetry with a bit of contemplation, a bit of anxiety and even the philosophy of life that the longer the journey, the more profound it becomes. Like with "Data Maze", Tran Sang worries about social networks, about "search engines" that create distance between people: "Tomorrow, who will remember/ when the binary chain is historicized/ emotions are hidden in symbols/ a "like" a "love" a "haha"/ hiding the emptiness inside".

I found in this collection of poems gentle and peaceful right from the title. It was a “Morning listening to birds singing”, or “Listening to the scent of the night-blooming cereus flower”, or simply a “Homecoming” trip. In the gentle lines of poetry, I encountered a Tran Sang who was in pain: “Returning to plow the land where I was born/ to find my roots/ after twenty years of wandering/ who would have thought that the floating water hyacinth would not bloom?” (“Returning”).

The big image and long-lasting emotion in “Following the River” is probably about the hometown, the river and the mother. Once, sharing about the upcoming release of this “brainchild”, poet Tran Sang confided about the unending pain when his mother left this temporary world. Therefore, in this collection of poems: “I write about my mother, about the peaceful days of my childhood, about the corner of the old house where my mother used to sit and mend clothes. I write about the affectionate calls, the gentle smiles, the times when my mother quietly sent me off without saying much other than the familiar instructions”. He also confided that for nearly 10 years he has been quietly writing, keeping the verses as pieces of memories, of the emotions he has passed through. Not in a hurry, not noisy, just quietly writing, keeping. It seemed like they would forever be just private lines, but then the time came for the poems to step out into the light. For him, “Following the Flow” is a journey, about things he wanted to say but never said...

Indeed, the more you turn the pages of the book, the more you seem to encounter your own memories in Tran Sang's memories. "The oil lamp" in the corner of the house "casts its shadow in the dust of time". Wishing "I will return to bathe in my pond", Tran Sang wrote in "Returning to the Field" with a verse that seems startled, disappointed and chokes the reader: "Half a life, suddenly imbued with the lullaby of my homeland". Perhaps, only after half a life of wandering, can we imbue with the lullaby of our homeland, when we return, the stones have been crushed and faded, and so many figures are now just memories.

So, after reading “Following the Flow”, I again understood his verse “Time is a loop”. Millions and billions of loops, maybe I will be back in the same old position, but will the old scene and old people still exist and will I still be the same me from the past. Tran Sang’s thoughts in the poem “Hen” ending the collection of poems are really beautiful: “Please make an appointment tomorrow/ I will return to brush back the fading frost in my hair”.

Poet Tran Sang was born in 1985, from Tan Chau - An Giang. He is currently Vice President of the Union of Literature and Arts Associations of An Giang province, a member of the Vietnam Writers Association and the Vietnam Journalists Association. This collection of poems is his third published publication, after the poetry collection "The River Forever" (2014) and the memoir "The Source of the Hau River" (2018). Of which, the memoir "The Source of the Hau River" won the C Prize of the Vietnam Union of Literature and Arts Associations 2018.

Article and photos: DANG HUYNH

Source: https://baocantho.com.vn/doc-tho-tran-sang-thoi-gian-la-vong-lap-lai--a184953.html