If I hadn't sat there
I'd never have felt
the breeze
nor heard the leaves
tell me their story
Mark Gordon
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
如果沒有坐在那裡
我就不會感受到
微風吹佛
或是聽到葉子
訴說他們的故事
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
如果没有坐在那里
我就不会感受到
微风吹佛
或者听到叶子
诉说他们的故事
Bio Sketch
Mark
Gordon grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He started writing tanka two
years ago on Twitter. His longer poems have been published in numerous
literary journals, including Poet Lore, Quiddity and Illuminations. He has lived in Toronto for the past forty years, where he has taught ESL to newcomers to Canada.
Mark’s one-sentence tanka effectively builds, line by line, to a thematically significant and emotionally powerful ending that has the most weight and reveals the theme of a sense of oneness with nature. And it works well as a squeal poem to his following tanka, which was published on October 19, 2016:
ReplyDeleteThe wind spins
leaves on the birch
faces
of sorrow
faces of light
Note: For more info. about Somonka, see my "To the Lighthouse" post, titled "Somonka, A Pair of Corresponsive Tanka," which can be accessed at http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.ca/2014/07/to-lighthouse-somonka-pair-of.html