English Original
giving me
a bowlful of tears
mother disappeared
without trace
in my dream
I’m a Traveller, 2011
Kozue Uzawa
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
媽媽的失踪
讓我哭了
很多次
甚至在我夢裡
她消失無影無踪
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
妈妈的失踪
让我哭了
很多次
甚至在我梦里
她消失无影无踪
Bio Sketch
Kozue Uzawa is a retired university professor. She works as editor of the English tanka journal GUSTS. She composes tanka both in Japanese and English. She also translates Japanese tanka into English and co-published Ferris Wheel: 101 Modern and Contemporary Tanka (Boston: Cheng & Tsui, 2006), and Kaleidoscope: Selected Tanka of Shuji Terayama (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 2008). Ferris Wheel received the 2007 Donald Keene Translation Award for Japanese Literature from Columbia University.
Kozue,'s tanka effectively builds, poeitc phrase (ku)/line by poeitc phrase (ku)/line, to a thematically significant and visually and emotionally poignant ending that reveals the theme of the "double loss of one's mother ( in both life and dream)."
ReplyDeleteAnd sociopolitically conscious and historically rich and allusive L2, adds emotional weight and psychological depth to this heart-wrenching tanka.
FYI: "A Bowlful of Tears" is a story about a Chinese woman Lee Puey You's immigration experience at "Angel Island (the Island of Tears" for Chinese immigrants) where there are Chinese poems on the walls of the immigration barracks. One of her famous lines, a refrain: "I must have cried a bowlful of tears."