"In the glass jar
Holding dying fireflies
I breathed into it.”
(Translated by Nguyen Quang Thieu)
And since then, after nearly 40 years, that poem has occasionally resounded in me in different special circumstances. It radiated into my spirit a fragile but penetrating and lasting light. It made me see the way in the darkness of limitations, fear and hopelessness.
The material fireflies will die. No one can save them. But the poet stepped forward and breathed a breath into them. That breath was not to save the physical life of those tiny fireflies but to save the light of the spirit of life. Light, in my opinion, is the true nature of life and is what prolongs life indefinitely. The poet's breath at that time was the breath of faith and boundless love. Like a fate, each passing day of a person is a death. No one can extend yesterday to 24 hours 0 minutes 01 seconds. Yesterday ended at exactly 24 hours 0 minutes 0 seconds. But the light of yesterday in the thoughts and souls of people can last forever.
A poem written by the Zen poet Matsuo Bashō about 400 years ago. The fireflies have died, and the poet's life has ended. The bodies of the fireflies and the poet have turned to dust. But the breath of poetry carrying the supreme spirit of light is still there and continues to shine through countless human lives. All values other than that light have withered. And sometimes, in the thick darkness of this world, I see the poet's glass bottle rise and shine. At that time, wherever I look, I see light radiating, fragile, penetrating, and lasting. Light from the earth, from sand, from rocks, from iron, from hungry and ragged bodies, from the eye sockets of skulls, from the wheels grinding heavily on the road, from the nests of insects...
When I was a child, I thought that light only came from the flickering oil lamps in the countryside and the bright sun on the fields every morning. As I grew up, I realized that light is everywhere, even in spaces that we thought were filled with darkness.
I often have flights across many time zones. So sometimes I am flying in the magical dawn above the clouds in some region of the sky and then immediately sink into darkness. And sometimes in the endless darkness, the dawn appears. During those flights, I often think about the world. When I am above the clouds, the feeling of the vastness of the world disappears. At that time, the world is pitifully small and extremely lonely. And we are actually just living in that extremely small world. At that time, human life with its countless desires and inhibitions no longer has any meaning. Greed, delusion, madness, cruelty, hatred… appear and mock humans. And I used to think that we are often just a bunch of insects chirping loudly on suffocating summer evenings.
Painting: Oriole under the moon, oil on canvas, size 90x110cm |
When we watch the dawn and the darkness pass by on flights from one time zone to another, we realize how short our lives are. Everything is born and everything dies. And during our lifetimes, the light is rarely kindled in us. We live in the darkness of ignorance. We see only the things of darkness. But because we are so accustomed to darkness, it makes us mistake it for light. We make a terrible mistake when we think that when we see something other than ourselves, we are in the light or illuminated by the light. The house we live in, the office we work in, the city we live in, are all illuminated by a false light. The light of lamps and even the sun is only a physical contrast that allows us to identify the masses of matter around us. That light is not capable of illuminating our entire life and the universe.
True light only comes to us from a path in the depths of darkness. It does not come from places of dazzling illusion and noise. I remember the story of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh when talking about the Zen poems of poet Ko Un. In a snowy winter, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh visited Korean poet Ko Un in the suburbs of Seoul. Ko Un used to be a monk. Ko Un wrote many famous Zen poems. One morning, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh woke up and saw on the black branches of trees like dry burnt branches, pure white apricot blossoms, pure and splendid. Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh exclaimed: "Ko Un's Zen poems are those apricot blossoms". The apricot blossoms had sunk into the cold and utter silence of winter to one day appear simply but brilliantly.
There are countless things made of matter that have long since died and never make any vague noise. There are even things that have died as soon as they are born, and there are things that people think are powerfully alive that have also died. Especially for those who carry the name of poet, if they do not know how to revive and manifest beauty, then their poetic power and extra-poetic power are just a death while they are existing as a multicellular life form that they do not realize. But the fireflies in the glass jar nearly 400 years ago still shine mysteriously and warmly in my soul. That is the light of beauty and kindness that poetry is a means to preserve. Let's keep the light of the spirit of life. Come and breathe into this life a breath like a warm January breeze so that the buds submerged in the dark soil can wake up and shine.
Source: https://baothainguyen.vn/van-nghe-thai-nguyen/202507/hay-mang-den-mot-hoi-tho-b8c0936/
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