this winter dawn
drips with pale blue light
once again
leaving behind
my native land
Gusts, 23, Spring/Summer 2016
Elena Calvo
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
這個冬天黎明
潑灑淡藍的天光
再一次
離棄
我的祖國
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
这个冬天黎明
泼洒淡蓝的天光
再一次
离弃
我的祖国
Bio Sketch
Elena Calvo started journaling and writing poetry at the age of seven in her native land, Spain. She writes lyric poetry, essays, aphorisms, haiku and tanka in both English and Spanish. Her work has appeared in different anthologies published in Canada, as well as in OIW, HC, KaDo and Gusts.
Elena's heartfelt tanka effectively builds, line by line, to a thematically significant and emotionally powerful ending that has the most weight and reveals the theme of exilic nostalgia. And armed with the symbolically rich image of "pale blue light," the pivot, "once again," successfully adds emotional weight to the poem.
ReplyDeleteAnd her tanka reminds me of the following remark:
“It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity.”
― Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991