Reading Tran Sang's poem - "Time is a loop"

The poetry collection "Following the Flow" by poet Tran Sang.

I was impressed by this poetry collection right from the first poem, titled "The Circle." The poem includes the lines: "Time is a loop / We spin in the days and months / If we keep going, we will one day meet / Our own lost selves today."

From that emotion, I read and felt Tran Sang's poetry with a little reflection, a little contemplation, and even life philosophies that become more profound the longer I travel. For example, with "Data Labyrinth," Tran Sang ponders about social media, about the "search machines" that create distance between people: "Tomorrow, who will remember / when historicizing binary strings / emotions withdraw into symbols / a 'like' a 'love' a 'haha' / concealing the emptiness within."

I found in this collection of poems gentle and peaceful, right from the title. There's "Listening to the Birds Singing in the Morning," or "Hearing the Night-Blooming Jasmine," or simply a "Returning Home." Amidst these gentle lines, I encounter a Trần Sang's poignant reflection: "Returning to cultivate the land where I was born/ to find my roots/ twenty years of wandering/ who would have thought that the floating water hyacinths wouldn't bloom?" ("Returning Home").

The overarching imagery and lingering emotions in "Following the River" are perhaps about his hometown, the river, and his mother. Once, sharing about the upcoming release of this "spiritual child," poet Tran Sang poured out his heart about the unbearable pain of his mother's passing. Therefore, in this poetry collection: "I write about my mother, about the peaceful days of my childhood, about the old corner of the house where she used to sit mending clothes. I write about the affectionate calls, the gentle smiles, the times my mother silently bid me farewell without saying much beyond her familiar words of advice." He also confided that for nearly 10 years he quietly wrote, preserving these verses as fragments of memories and emotions he had experienced. Without haste or fanfare, he wrote and kept them quietly. It seemed as though they would forever remain private, but then the time came for the poetry to step into the light. For him, "Following the Flow" is a journey, a collection of things he wanted to say but never uttered...

Indeed, the further one turns the pages of the book, the more one encounters their own memories within Tran Sang's memories. The "oil lamp" in the corner of the house "casts its shadow in the dust of time." The desire "to return to bathe in one's own pond," Tran Sang writes in "Returning to the Countryside," with a line that is both startling, disheartening, and choking the reader: "Half a lifetime suddenly filled with the lullaby of home." Perhaps, only after more than half a lifetime of wandering do we truly appreciate the lullaby of home, returning only to find the rocks shattered and the gold faded, all the figures now just memories.

So, after reading "Following the Flow," I once again understood his line, "Time is a loop." Millions and billions of loops—perhaps we'll find ourselves back in the same place, but will the old scenery and the old people remain, and will we still be the same person we were before? Tran Sang's reflections in the poem "Promise," which concludes the collection, are truly beautiful: "Let's make a promise for tomorrow / I'll return to brush away the fading mist from my hair."

Poet Tran Sang was born in 1985 in Tan Chau, An Giang province. He is currently the Vice President of the Union of Literature and Arts Associations of An Giang province, and a member of the Vietnam Writers Association and the Vietnam Journalists Association . This poetry collection is his third published work, following the poetry collection "The River Remains the Same Forever" (2014) and the essay collection "At the Source of the Hau River" (2018). The essay collection "At the Source of the Hau River" won the C Prize at the 2018 Vietnam Union of Literature and Arts Associations Award.

Text and photos: DANG HUYNH

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