English Original
immobile for weeks
I dream of my mother
playing her bagpipes
in the moonlit street ...
how we danced wild and free
Joyce Budenberg
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
幾個星期無法走動
我夢見媽媽
在月光映照下的大街
吹呀吹着風笛 ...
過去我們如何狂野而自由地跳舞
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
几个星期无法走动
我梦见妈妈
在月光映照下的大街
吹呀吹着风笛 ...
过去我们如何狂野而自由地跳舞
Bio Sketch
Born in Scotland, now living in New Zealand, Joyce Budenberg works as a counsellor/therapist and has a love of reading and writing haiku.
Bookended by the contrasting images of being immobile for weeks and dancing wild and free together in the past, Joy's heartwarming tanka builds, poetic phrase/line by poetic phrase/line, to an unexpected yet thematically significant and visually and emotionally powerful ending that reveals the theme of Freedom, physical/outward and spiritual/inner. And most importantly, it's spiritual freedom/L5 (generically speaking, having the most weight) that guides the speaker through tough times, L1.
ReplyDeleteAnd culturally speaking, there is a lot of gender bias in the established/old-fashioned bagpipes community; this (nationalistic) instrument is more commonly associated with men. Over the past two decades, there have been more and more women playing the bagpipes. One of the most famous female bagpipers is Louise Marshall, who has played at many high-profile events around the world, including the London Olympics.
Evaluated in this thematic context of the cultural politics of bagpipes playing, the speaker's mother, her role model, was not only a skilled (amateur) performer who "danced wild and free," but also a "spiritually and culturally wide and free" woman.