English Original
and when
the sand runs out?
the stillness
of the hourglass
and I are one
Ash Moon Anthology, 2008
Denis M. Garrison
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
什麼時候
細沙子流完了？
此時沙漏
的寂靜
和我是合一
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
什么时候
细沙子流完了？
此时沙漏
的寂静
和我是合一
Bio Sketch
Denis M. Garrison, from Iowa, now lives in Maryland. His childhood was spent in Japan, youth in Europe, Africa and western Pacific. His poetry’s widely published. Garrison’s print collections include First Winter Rain, Eight Shades of Blue, Hidden River, Sailor in the Rain and Other Poems, and Fire Blossoms.
The rhetorical question in the upper verse is used to evoke a well-known Western literary image of the sands of time running out, effectively establishing the thematic and emotional context for the poem. And then "the stillness," the structural focus of the poem, is inserted between the upper verse and the lower, "where the conventions of the West lead us to expect a homily about the fleeting nature of time, pleasure, glory, et cetera, Garrison's embrace of stillness is an unexpected surprise" (M. Kei, "Introduction," Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, Volume II, 2009), reshaping our most existential sense of being in the flow of time in a radical way.
ReplyDeleteAnd it might be interesting to do a thematic comparative reading of the following tanka:
layers
of this blue life
winnowed
by the hourglass
my furrows deepen
Poetry Nook, 5, April 2014
Debbie Strange