Sunday, June 3, 2018

One Man's Maple Moon: Native Land Tanka by Elena Calvo

English Original

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.

1 comment:

  1. 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.

    And 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

    ReplyDelete