English Original
the comfort of tears
mirrored in dragonfly eyes
thousands of lives
all at once in the sun
pulling me into their dance
In Sun, Snow & Rain, 2023
Linda Jeannette Ward
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
眼淚的安慰
反映在蜻蜓的眼睛裡
成千上萬的生命
一下子都出現在陽光下
將我帶入他們的舞蹈中
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
眼泪的安慰
反映在蜻蜓的眼睛里
成千上万的生命
一下子都出现在阳光下
将我带入他们的舞蹈中
Bio Sketch
Linda Jeannette Ward was best known for her tanka poetry, published in journals internationally, and included in two collections: A Frayed Red Thread (Clinging Vine Press, 2000) and Scent of Jasmine and Brine (Inkling Press, 2007). Her tanka won 2nd and 3rd prizes in the Tanka Society of America's annual competition, as well as four Tanka Splendor Awards. And her collection, a delicate dance of wings, received the Haiku Society of America's 2003 Merit Book Award for Best Book of Haibun.
Enhanced by the use of an implied metaphor (Ls 2&3; eyes for visions of lives), Linda's tanka effectively builds, poetic phrase(ku)/line by poetic phrase(ku)/line, to unexpected yet thematically significant and visually and emotionally uplifting ending that reveals the theme of the personal experience (Ls 1&2, L5) of the transcendence of suffering/sadness (L1) through community healing (Ls 3-5).
ReplyDeleteAnd it might be interesting to do a thematic comparative reading of my tanka below:
tandav,
this dance of life and death ...
alone
I'm bathed in autumn sunset
as leaves swirl in circles
Pages Literary Journal, Oct. 23, 2022
FYI: Dragonflies have two large compound eyes, each with thousands of lenses, and three eyes with simple lenses. Each retina contains several thousand photoreceptors that collect light and send information about the visual scene to interneurons, which further process the information.
A dragonfly's eyes cover most of its head and they can see nearly 360 degrees around them.