I look again
through mountain mists…
there, a skylark
illumines a thought
conjured in darkness
A Hundred Gourds, 3:3, June 2014
Alegria Imperial
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
通過山霧
我再一次觀看...
那兒，一隻雲雀
照亮我在黑暗中
構思的想法
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
通过山雾
我再一次观看...
那儿，一只云雀
照亮我在黑暗中
构思的想法
Bio Sketch
Alegria Imperial’s haiku for Haiku Foundation’s 2012 Haiku Competition
was Commended in the traditional category. She has also won honorable
mentions in the 2007 Vancouver Cherry Blossoms Festival Invitational
Haiku and her tanka adjudged Excellent, 7th International Tanka Festival
Competition 2012. Her poetry have been published in international
journals among them A Hundred Gourds, The Heron’s Nest, LYNX, Notes from the Gean, eucalypt and GUSTS. Formerly of Manila Philippines, she now lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Thematically speaking, this evocative tanka is tightly framed by the symbolically rich and psychologically resonant phrases, [the speaker's seeing through] "through 'mountain mists'" and [a skylark illuminating] "a thought/conjured in 'darkness.'" And the relationship between the speaker and the skylark reminds me of that of Percy Bysshe Shelley and the skylark in "To a Skylark."
ReplyDeleteNote: "'To a Skylark' is considered a work of metric virtuosity in its ability to convey the swift movement of the bird who swoops high above the earth, beyond mortal experience. The skylark is a symbol of the joyous spirit of the divine; it cannot be understood by ordinary, empirical methods. The poet, longing to be a skylark, muses that the bird has never experienced the disappointments and disillusionments of human life, including the diminishment of passion."