English Original
two days alone
driving the desert
road on the map
thin gray line to nowhere
I'm fasting on dust
Journeys: Getting Lost, 2014
Carole Johnston
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
整整兩天單獨
駕駛在地圖上顯示
的沙漠道路
灰色的細線引向死胡同
我只好禁食吃塵埃
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
整整两天单独
驾驶在地图上显示
的沙漠道路
灰色的细线引向死胡同
我只好禁食吃尘埃
Bio Sketch
Carole Johnston has been writing Japanese short form poetry for twelve years and has published haiku and tanka in various print and online journals. Her first chapbook, Journeys: Getting Lost, was published in 2015 by Finishing Line Press. Retired from teaching, she drives around writing poems about landscape. Visit her on Twitter (@morganabag) to read more of her poetry.
Carole's tanka effectively builds, line by line, to a thematically significant and emotionally poignant ending that reveals the theme of "challenges on the journey."
ReplyDeleteAnd it might be interesting to do a thematic comparative reading of her another journey tanka included in the same collection:
I charge
down the highway
crashing
into butterflies
rushing toward birth