when I smoke
a bitter morning cigarette
the wings
of a seagull
skim my heart
Kaleidoscope, 2007
Shuji Terayama
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
早晨當我抽
一根苦澀的煙
海鷗
的一對翅膀
掠過我的心
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
早晨当我抽
一根苦涩的烟
海鸥
的一对翅膀
掠过我的心
Bio Sketch
The
avant-garde stage and film director, poet, critic, author and founder
of the experimental theater group Tenjo Sajiki, Shuji Terayama was born
in 1935 in Aomori, Japan. He started writing tanka in his late teens and
received the Tanka Kenkyu Award for Emerging Poets. He published
several tanka collections before he stopped writing at the age of 30.
Many of his tanka read more like scenes from a movie scene or short
story. He died in 1983. The first English language collection of his
tanka, Kaleidoscope, was published by The Hokuseido Press in 2008 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his death.
The upper verse sets the scene and mood while the lower verse subtly conveys a sense of loneliness.
ReplyDeleteShuji's understated, emotive tanka could be read as a prequel to the following poem in his collection of tanka,"Kaleidoscope," 2007
striking a match
momentarily
I see the foggy ocean --
is there a motherland
I can dedicate myself to?