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Reciting Spring Poems, Offering the Fragrance of Flowers with Wine
Dwelling in the present moment is not separate from the past and the future; through mindfulness and right concentration, we not only build the future but also create a solid past. Although the past has gone by, when we live fully in today, today will become the beautiful past of tomorrow. Those who have not had a warm past can nourish a new past by living harmoniously, peacefully, and happily right now, because the future is made only from the substance of the present.
The poem “Spring in Exile” by Nguyễn Bính, written sixty years ago (in 1942 in Huế), depicts the longing for homeland and childhood memories: uncertain if one can return for Tết, the river separating the three regions, the persistent, melancholic rain; two children pretending to be grown-ups, drinking wine, gathering fallen orange blossoms to make perfume water, and sleeping soundly until morning. Those memories bring comfort amid failures in career and love, and then the loneliness of five years with “a hundred sorrows, a thousand griefs.” The images of the orange grove, thatched roof, village market, and ferry landing are symbols of a pure past—even though the flowers fall, the wine is finished, and dreams dissolve, those memories remain a source of vitality for the soul.
- Playing together under the thatched roof
- Gathering fallen orange blossoms in the neighbor’s garden
- Making perfume water, though it was not very fragrant
- Smearing flowers on our hair, then gleefully playing
- Tasting the sharp yeast of rice wine at the ancestral memorial
- Embracing each other, sleeping soundly until morning
