watching the moon
wax, wane, wax full again
I wait for you
to choose between loving her
and coming home to me
Atlas Poetica, 8, 2011
Susan Constable
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
注視著
月滿,月殘,再次月滿
我等你
在愛她或回到我身邊
之間做出選擇
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
注视著
月满,月残,再次月满
我等你
在爱她或回到我身边
之间做出选择
Bio Sketch
Susan Constable’s tanka appear in numerous journals and anthologies, including Take Five. She placed third in the 2010 Tanka Society of America Contest and her tanka collection, The Eternity of Waves, is one of the winning entries in the eChapbook Awards for 2012. She is currently the tanka editor for the international on-line journal, A Hundred Gourds. Susan lives with her husband on Canada’s beautiful west coast.
The upper verse successfully sets the scenic/emotive context, while in the lower one, the speaker presents a life-changing choice through the emotionally effective use of the 2nd person POV, a type of choice that most readers can wholeheartedly understand and identify with the reason(s) behind it.
ReplyDeleteOn a second reading, the imagery of different moon phases works not only on a literal level, which indicates the passage of time, but also on a symbolic level, which shows the different stages of a marital relationship one might go through.