for a second time
I stoop to pick up
something silver
on the floor and find it
to be moonlight
Gusts, 18, Fall/Winter 2013
Barry George
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
第二次
我彎腰撿起
在地板上的銀色物件
我發現
它竟然是月光
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
第二次
我弯腰捡起
在地板上的银色物件
我发现
它竟然是月光
Bio Sketch
Barry
George’s haiku have been widely published in journals and anthologies,
and in Chinese, Japanese, German, Romanian, Croatian, and French
translations. A winner of competitions including First Prize in the
Gerald Brady Senryu Contest, he is the author of Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haiku, nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Barry effectively employs the technique of “mitate” ("taking one thing for another" as shown in the following waka in the note) to convey the speaker's state of mood/mind. And on a second reading, L1 adds emotional weight to the poem.
ReplyDeleteNote:
In my garden
plum blossoms fall –
or is it not rain
but snow, cast down
from the sky?
Otomo No Tabito (665 – 731)
(Addiss, "The Art of Haiku:Its History through Poems and Paintings by Japanese Masters," p. 17)
For more info., see the second half of "To the Lighthouse: Haiku as a Form of Super-Position," http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.ca/2013/03/to-lighthouse-haiku-as-form-of-super.html