Monday, June 14, 2021

One Man's Maple Moon: Autograph Book Tanka by Keitha Keyes

English Original

roses are red
violets are blue ...

your words
in my autograph book
as hollow then as now

Cattails, April 2018

Keitha Keyes 


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

玫瑰是紅色的
紫羅蘭是藍色的 ...
你的這些話
在我的簽名簿中
當時是空洞就像現在一樣

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

玫瑰是红色的
紫罗兰是蓝色的 ...
你的这些话
在我的签名簿中
当时是空洞就像现在一样


Bio Sketch

Keitha Keyes lives in Sydney, surrounded by antique irons and ship models. She enjoys writing tanka, haiku, senryu, cherita and related genres. Her work is published in many journals and anthologies in Australia and overseas.

1 comment:

  1. Keitha's heart-wrenching tanka effectively builds, poetic phrase/line by poetic phrase/line, to an unexpected yet thematically and emotionally poignant ending that reveals the theme of sweet "nothings" (and empty promises).

    Allusive and factual Ls 1&2 carry no wight, thematic or emotional, both in the speaker's autograph book (L4) and in her mind (l5), regardless of the passage of time (L5).

    "Roses Are Red" is the name of a classic children's rhyming poem. It is also a class of poems inspired by that poem. ... A nursery rhyme significantly closer to the modern cliché Valentine's Day poem can be found in Gammer Gurton's Garland, a 1784 collection of English nursery rhymes:

    The rose is red, the violet's blue,
    The honey's sweet, and so are you.
    Thou are my love and I am thine;
    I drew thee to my Valentine:
    The lot was cast and then I drew,
    And Fortune said it shou'd be you.

    -- excerpted from the Wikipedia entry, "Roses Are Red," accessed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roses_Are_Red

    And its theme is also explored in Jon Caryl's famous song of the same title:

    Roses are red, violets are blue
    I don't sleep at night 'cause I'm thinking of you
    Alone with my thoughts, trapped in this bed
    Know I'd give the world just to see you again
    I'll believe it when I see it
    'Cause you said you're moving on
    Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it
    'Cause we both know you're not that strong
    'Cause slamming doors and crying out
    I thought it'd get you back 'til now
    Roses are red, violets are blue
    I don't sleep at night 'cause I'm thinking of you
    Alone with my thoughts, trapped in this bed
    Know I'd give the world just to see you again
    And your imperfections perfectly drawn up
    But I was a fool to think you were in love
    So roses are red, violets are blue
    It's all in my head, no matter what I do
    It seems you've lost your love for me
    Even though just two weeks ago you were happy
    It seems you've lost your sympathy
    But I guess it's my fault cause I let you slip from me
    I didn't believe you'd ever leave me
    So please, just listen to me now
    Roses are red, violets are blue
    I don't sleep at night 'cause I'm thinking of you
    Alone with my thoughts, trapped in this bed
    Know I'd give the world just to see you again
    And your imperfections perfectly drawn up
    But I was a fool to think you were in love
    So roses are red, violets are blue
    It's all in my head, no matter what I do
    So roses are red, violets are blue
    It's all in my head, no matter what I do

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