Happiness is our heart full of mother

In addition to his quite successful poems about the war and Truong Son, military poet Nguyen Huu Quy also wrote a series of poems about his mother that were quite touching. Born in the poor, windy, white-sand land of Quang Binh, he understood more than anyone the hardships and sacrifices of his mother.

The poem “I think about my mother” has a very simple title with a sincere narrative style that brings us back to many memories of the countryside and fields where the mother is the shining nucleus that always shines with the rare qualities of Vietnamese women: loyalty, diligence and loyalty. Nguyen Huu Quy’s poetry is imbued with the flavor of folk songs and folk songs through rich, figurative, and evocative images that are very close to the way people feel, think and speak. That is: “The folk hat protects the erosion” and “The rain and sun penetrate the mother’s life”. The verse opens up a familiar space that has been attached to the mother, which is the field. The mother reaps the field and the field also “reaps” the mother, reaps the mother’s age, reaps the mother’s strength.

And mother: "Sowing fairy tales, the sun rises, flowers become rice/ shouldering the mountains, red cottonwood is soaked with rice". Cottonwood is the flower name associated with a main food that feeds people. The red color of cottonwood flowers is like a belief in a bruised betel leaf. Cottonwood flowers are the witness of the village to: "The heart is tied in four directions, mother leaves a place to return to". The rhythm of the poem suddenly changes to another tone like a dialogue, self-questioning when the poet emphasizes three times in the next three stanzas "It's mother" as an honor, a pride, a spiritual support for himself with selected visual details clearly depicting the portrait of mother. That is: "Mother silently sits on the worn steps waiting/ the faltering steps of the time of pickling and eggplant" of a child used to "wandering", when: "Happy in a foreign land, forgetting the fireflies flying out". Mother knows how to wait because she believes in her child, her child, her flesh and blood.

And it is a discovery: “It is mother, not eloquent in speech/ a three-span bag containing bitter areca nuts and spicy betel leaves”. Here the poet is quite subtle in using ancient fairy tale images to talk about today without much metaphor. Just like that, the emotional movement increases to a new level, new nuances and new affection: “It is mother, the first person to feel pain/ when we make mistakes/ tears wet the afternoon, mother calls/ I come back to rub my eyes in the smoke of sunset”.

It can be said that “I think about my mother” by Nguyen Huu Quy has touched the deepest feelings of the heart, of awakening. Therefore, the poem has sympathy, communication and is filled with many emotions. The linear flow of the poem is like a story told from the memories of the soul, but there are shocks and shocks that leave many lingering worries. From there, the poet realizes the nature of happiness: “Happiness is my heart full of mother/ in a life that is inherently withered and fresh/ Happiness is after many ups and downs/ in the middle of my homeland I call out, Mother!”.

The call for mother with sobbing and longing ends but opens up many calls, many affections of the heart, poetry when "I think of you, mother".