(Baoquangngai.vn)- From the 2023-2024 school year, in the 7th grade textbooks for middle school, there will be my short poem "Sticky Rice Leaves". I wrote that poem in the middle of Truong Son, around March 1971, it has been 53 years now.
When I wrote poems along the Truong Son Road in the spring of 1971, I always felt like I was keeping a diary. Sitting on a hammock, waiting for dinner, or when I had just finished dinner and the marching time had not yet come, that was the time when I could sit down and write poems. Due to the pressure of time, the poems I wrote along the Truong Son Road were all short poems. They were like sudden flashes of lightning in my head, and I wrote the words down on paper, in a small notebook. I regret that I lost that notebook in a canal somewhere along Highway 4 - Cai Lay - My Tho.
Many people often idolize poetry writing, but in my opinion, poetry writing is also a normal type of labor like any other type of labor, sometimes even lighter, and more likely to cause a feeling of "self-satisfaction" than other types of labor. Going to Truong Son, many people must remember a type of forest leaf, our soldiers called it "sticky rice leaf". Because of its characteristic aroma when cooked, it is not different from the aroma of pandan leaves, and reminds us of the smell of sticky rice and sticky rice in our hometown.
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| Poet Thanh Thao in his youth. |
Many soldiers in my unit knew this type of sticky rice plant, so it was not difficult to find it. In the middle of Truong Son, there was no sticky rice to cook sticky rice. Luckily, there were "sticky rice leaves" mixed into the cooked rice, and the rice naturally had a sticky rice smell, which helped ease the longing for the sticky rice my mother cooked for us at home.
MEET THE GLUTINOUS RICE LEAVES
Away from home for several years
craving for harvest sticky rice
smoke drifting across the eye
the smell of sticky rice is strange
where are you mom this afternoon
pick leaves to cook
mother cooks sticky rice
that smells good all the way
oh the taste of home
how can i forget
old mother and country
share the love
small tree of Truong Son forest
understand the heart, so fragrant forever.
March 1971
Remembering the noontimes, when we had just arrived at the Rest Stop, cooking rice to eat, there would always be a soldier from our family who would run in the forest for a while, and bring back sticky rice leaves. The rice was seasoned with sticky rice leaves, and when the rice was just cooked, the aroma of sticky rice would waft out, not overwhelming, just faint, but making all our soldiers sniff. That was also a way to "eat into nostalgia", and here, it was nostalgia for a very familiar aroma, very familiar from home.
Before the war ended, my little poem "Gập cốm lá" (Meeting sticky rice leaves ) had "crossed the Truong Son mountain range" to Hanoi. The thing is, a friend who worked as a journalist received orders from the Southern war zone to go to the North and brought the manuscript of my poetry collection "Dựa chân qua trang co" (Footprints across the Grass Field) to Hanoi, and it reached my parents. My teacher was so happy, reading the handwritten manuscript of the poetry collection, it was as if he saw his own son coming home. He sat down and copied the entire collection of poems (my grandfather's handwriting was very beautiful, not as bad as mine). Then one time, an old prison friend of my teacher's from the time we were in the Buôn Ma Thuột prison came to visit, my teacher chose this poem "Gập cốm lá" for his cellmate to read. When my teacher's friend finished reading the poem, he cried and said: "Your son is completely loyal and filial."
After liberation, when I went to Hanoi, my teacher told me this story. I considered it the highest compliment for me. It was even higher than all the poetry awards I later received. Never think that "loyalty and filial piety" are the moral criteria of feudal times. They are the ultimate qualities of people in all ages. Loyalty to the country, filial piety to the people, and filial piety to one's parents. Without parents, there is no me. Without people, there is no country. And without country, there is nothing.
For many years, I have not only wandered through war, but also through ways of life, concepts of life, and life experiences. I think that I have been able to maintain myself until today thanks to the two words loyalty and filial piety. When a child has to be away from his parents, he has to put aside filial piety to practice loyalty. Sometimes, in certain circumstances, there must be a choice, and it is impossible to satisfy both loyalty and filial piety at the same time. My parents understood that, and they did not blame me at all.
I used to be a very fun-loving person, but since my parents returned to their hometown in Quang Ngai, every year during Tet, my whole family returned to Duc Tan (Mo Duc) to celebrate Tet with my parents. Until my grandparents passed away: "Wherever my parents are, that is home/the homeland is ten square meters/but the country is larger" (Thanh Thao's poem).
Yes, the country is larger, and I was lucky to meet a small symbol of my country, of my homeland, to meet a simple scent of a forest leaf called "sticky rice leaf".
I hope and wish that today, when reading and learning this small poem of mine, 7th grade students will feel the fragrance of sticky rice leaves that I felt more than half a century ago in the middle of Truong Son forest.
THANH THAO
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