Afternoon at the cemetery, filled with warm sunlight

Every time July comes, I am moved by the verses of July poetry - the haunting verses that remind me of deep affection. I know and love "The Whip of That Day" by author Dinh Pham Thai, written on the theme "Remembering the wounded and fallen soldiers". The day you were naughty, you played/ Left home all day long/ The whip fell on your skinny body/ Hurting your mother's hands and making her eyes sting/ Now you are far away/ Holding your bones, without a door or a home, forever walking/ Truong Son is a green strip/ Black soil, red soil, what kind of soil buried you./ Legs trembling, groping for the worn stick/ Afraid to pick up the whip that is still around...

Illustration: NGOC DUY

The poem has no crying, because it seems like “tears have sunk inside” but somehow every time I read it, my tears fall silently. Perhaps, the emotions of a mother whose son died in the war have touched a deep part of my heart. I see the image of my uncle, my grandmother in it.

My uncle died in Quang Tri when he was just over twenty years old. For decades, my family searched all over the cemeteries of this sunny and windy countryside but could not find any information. My grandmother could not wait any longer and had to leave, carrying with her a lingering longing. Pitying my grandmother whose hair turned gray over the years, who until the last moment still felt anxious because her son was still unknown where he lay; pitying my uncle who devoted his youth to the country but was never visited by any relatives, my father continued to quietly search.

Then, one afternoon before Tet, about fifteen years ago, I received a call from my father. His voice was filled with tears but mixed with a bit of joy: “My son, a friend of mine said that they read information in the People's Army newspaper that your uncle's name was among the unknown graves in the second lot on the right corner of the Gio Linh District Martyrs' Cemetery. These graves seem to have just been gathered here. In this area, there is only one grave with a name. That is the grave of martyr Le Dinh Du (Ho Thua) - a reporter for the People's Army newspaper. He died on January 21, 1968”. I choked up. Tears just fell silently.

Then my father followed him on a rainy afternoon with the words: “I’m gone, you’re in Quang Tri, remember to come to me to warm my heart!” My eyes filled with tears. My heart ached with the sadness of separation. From then on, every July, I would carry offerings and a bouquet of white chrysanthemums alone in the cemetery. I would light incense sticks on each row of gravestones while reciting each sad line of poetry.

Old age is often full of worries, old people often rely on the happy and sad memories of life to see the days go by. The mother's memories contain sadness. And perhaps the mother's greatest torment is the "lashes of the whip". The poet was very subtle when using the word "fall" instead of other familiar verbs.

“Fall” is a polite expression, helping to ease the reader’s sadness. “Where are you far away?” “What land will bury you?” are actually questions – rhetorical questions like tears of longing. What is unusual here is that there is no question mark at the end of the sentence.

Mother asked her heart. Time is endless, space is vast, where can she find her child? I think of the image of my grandmother with her silver hair sitting by the door every afternoon, looking far away into the vague, uncertain space, waiting for news of her son who has gone forever... My grandmother carried that torment to the white clouds on a winter afternoon...

Years have passed, now my mother’s eyes are dim, her legs are weak, the torment still lingers with time. It’s as if she is unconscious, always feeling like she is “not right” with me but there is no longer a chance for her to say words of comfort. That torment is present every day.

The “whip” of the past is still clear in my mother’s mind. The fire of war has long since died down, the wounds of war have healed over the years, but deep in the hearts of mothers and families whose loved ones have gone forever, there is still the pain of the war. Many times July has come, many times standing among the rows of tombstones, I have recited the poem. This afternoon, another such afternoon. The parasol tree still rustles season after season in the sun and wind.

The call of the turtle calling its friend echoed from the horizon. Incense smoke billowed in the fading sunset. Rows of gravestones were still silently lined up next to each other like rows of soldiers on a battle day. I quietly lit incense sticks on each grave in the second lot, on the right corner, where there was only one grave with a name.

Gio Linh this season is filled with warm sunshine. The incense sticks of the heart still linger in the song of gratitude.

Thien Lam

Source: https://baoquangtri.vn/chieu-nghia-trang-duom-nong-nang-lua-187390.htm