a newspaper,
zebra or pair of dice --
some things
just fine as they are
in black and white
Susan Constable
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
一份報紙，
一匹斑馬或一對骰子 --
有些東西
蠻好的當它們是
白與黑的時候
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
一份报纸，
一匹斑马或一对骰子 --
有些东西
蛮好的当它们是
白与黑的时候
Bio Sketch
Susan Constable’s tanka appear in numerous journals and anthologies, including Take Five. Her tanka collection, The Eternity of Waves,
was one of the winning entries in the eChapbook Awards for 2012. She is
currently the tanka editor for the international on-line journal, A Hundred Gourds.
The symbolically rich and thought-provoking closing line, "in black and white," sparks the reader's reflection on the thematically dialectical relationship between a list of things in the upper verse and the thematic statement in the lower verse (for example, do you think the news [printed/reported] in "black and white" is good for the reader?), and most importantly, on everything we face in life.
ReplyDelete“Shades of grey wherever I go
The more I find out the less that I know
Black and white is how it should be
But shades of grey are the colors I see.”
-- Billy Joel