Sunday, March 23, 2014

One Man's Maple Moon: Heart Tanka by Roary Williams

English Original

my cardiologist
tells me my heart
is clogged
with a little bit of bacon
and a little bit of you ...

Roary Williams


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

心臟科醫生
告訴我我的心臟
堵塞:
有一點點的培根
和一點點的你 ...

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

心脏科医生
告诉我我的心脏
堵塞:
有一点点的培根
和一点点的你 ...


Bio Sketch

Roary Williams lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is fifty-five years old and has been writing micropoetry in the Japanese forms for almost five years, writing almost exclusively on Twitter as @CoyoteSings. He studies zen, loves animals, and keeps several ferrets.


(Editor's Note: This is the first tanka accepted for the 2014 translation project. The best 66 tanka selected for One Man's Maple Moon, 2013: Selected English-Chinese Bilingual Tanka will be announced next week)

2 comments:

  1. The shift (from physiological illness to emotional distress) is unexpected yet powerful, adding emotional weight and psychological depth to the poem.

    Roary's emotionally effective use of repetition, combined with '...,' reveals something about the speaker's personality.

    ReplyDelete