English Original
watching TV
scene after scene
of the earthquake
without turning my head
I reach out for him
Fire Pearls, Vol. 2, 2013
scene after scene
of the earthquake
without turning my head
I reach out for him
Fire Pearls, Vol. 2, 2013
Kirsten Cliff Elliot
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
觀看電視
一幕接一幕
的地震情景
不用轉身
我伸出手來抓住他
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
观看电视
一幕接一幕
的地震情景
不用转身
我伸出手来抓住他
Bio Sketch
Kirsten Cliff Elliot is a New Zealand poet and writer. She works in a high school library and is studying towards a BA in Information and Library Studies. Together with her husband, she blogs at Help! My husband has Asperger’s: Our life on the spectrum’s edge.
The upper verse sets the theme and mood of this disaster tanka while the lower verse shows how closeness/intimacy in the speaker's relationship is enhanced/strengthened.
ReplyDeleteThe following is my haibun, "I know that the Earthquake is old news but...," that could be read as a backstory for Kirsten's earthquake tanka:
ReplyDeleteThat afternoon I was rocked into a deep sleep. In my dream I saw Mother holding me tightly and tearfully whispering a lullaby, "My child! ... Fear not, and sleep well."
amidst debris
scattered through the fields ...
a child's pink book
A reporter keyed in the headline,"7.9 Earthquake trembled through Sichuan, China." Official figures (as of June 4):
69,122 are confirmed dead,
4.8 million people homeless,
and 7,000 classrooms flattened...
one howl, then many ...
the starless night
even darker
An operator pushed a button; numbers and images spread over the front page.Newsprint slid through color printers. Somewhere in the back pages, the China earthquake story waited with the news from other developing countries.
A Hundred Gourds, 4:4, September 2015