no falling blossoms
speak
my own mortality
only this crumpled napkin
this stained cup
Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, III, 2011
Sanford Goldstein
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
沒有飄落的花朵
能夠訴話
我自己必死的命運
只有這個皺巴巴的餐巾
以及這個有污垢的杯子
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
没有飘落的花朵
能够诉话
我自己必死的命运
只有这个皱巴巴的餐巾
以及这个有污垢的杯子
Bio Sketch
Sanford
Goldstein has been publishing tanka for more than fifty years. He was
born in 1925 and is now 94 years old. Long ago, he wrote haiku, but
decided to focus on tanka. His latest books, three in the last two
years, have each said this would be his last.
In this poem, the poet’s advancing age and debilities is represented by the crumpled napkin and stained cup—things that will be thrown away in the due course of time. Noting that “no falling blossoms speak my own mortality,” the poet communicates the idea that he too will be discarded as readily as the trash he contemplates. This poem is a fine example of how the unwritten part of the poem matters as much as the words that appear on the page. Sanford Goldstein, professor, translator, poet, editor, and critic, is one of the great tanka poets composing in English. Yet he doesn’t compare himself to the cherry blossoms of Japan, eagerly anticipated every spring and famous the world over, but instead to those those items destined for the rubbish bin.
ReplyDeleteEditor Andrew Riutta comments, “The best tanka, in my opinion, are always those that manage to be wholly ‘Japanese’ in tone, yet via a doorway not obviously marked as such—poems that possess more Japanese attributes than what can immediately be perceived by the finite senses. My feeling is that Sanford's poem would've shined as brightly in ancient times as it does today. After all, is not a crumpled napkin truly a fallen blossom?” ...
-- excerpted from Introduction: Tanka as World Literature, Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, III, pp. 20-1.