English Original
a fall cricket
sings alone on the porch
I too, wonder
about being born too late
or too soon
sings alone on the porch
I too, wonder
about being born too late
or too soon
Tanka Café, Ribbons, Autumn 2015
Michele L. Harvey
Michele L. Harvey
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
一隻秋天的蟋蟀
獨自在門廊唱歌
我也思索
自己出生太晚
或是過早
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
一只秋天的蟋蟀
独自在门廊唱歌
我也思索
自己出生太晚
或是过早
Bio Sketch
Michele L. Harvey is a professional landscape painter living in New York. Her year is divided between rural central NY and New York City, providing a lively contrast. Her poetry has kindly and widely been accepted by most of the current short form poetry publications and she has won numerous national and international Japanese short form poetry contests, both in haiku and tanka. While introduced to Japanese poetry in grade school, she didn’t attempt to write her own until 2005 when she discovered the contemporary poetry scene online.You may view both her paintings and examples of her poetry online at micheleharvey.com.
The buildup to L4 effectively builds a "life simile" between a lone cricket in late fall and the speaker, and the twist/surprise ending in L5 shows the speaker's view of life or state of mood/mind.
ReplyDeleteAnd it might be interesting to do a comparative reading of my tanka below:
night by night
the cricket songs
grow weaker
no one comes to see me
except the shadows
Skylark, 5:1, Summer 2017
FYI: To the Lighthouse: Twist/Surprise Ending, accessed at http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.com/2021/06/to-lighthouse-twistsurprise-ending.html