English Original
road signs
and cracked asphalt ...
familiar things,
yet I see
the face of Ozymandias
M. Kei
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
倒塌的路標
還有龜裂的瀝青路面...
這些熟悉的事物，
然而我看見
奧茲曼迪亞斯的臉
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
倒塌的路标
还有龟裂的沥青路面...
这些熟悉的事物，
然而我看见
奥兹曼迪亚斯的脸
Bio Sketch
M. Kei is a tall ship sailor and award-winning poet who lives on Maryland’s Eastern shore. He is the editor of Atlas Poetica: A Journal of World Tanka. His most recent collection of poetry is January, A Tanka Diary. He is also the author of the award-winning gay Age of Sail adventure novels, Pirates of the Narrow Seas. He can be followed on Twitter @kujakupoet, or visit AtlasPoetica.org.
M. Kei's allusive tanka visually effectively builds, line by line, to an unexpected yet thematically significant and historically and symbolically rich ending that reveals the theme of the "irony of Ozymandias/Greek name for the pharaoh Ramesses II (r. 1279–1213 BC):" the statue of the "King of all kings" lying in dust
ReplyDeleteI met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart.[d] Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
— Percy Shelley, "Ozymandias", 1819 edition
My tanka below could be read as a poetic response to Kei's writing intention:
ReplyDeleteOzymandias…
in wind-blown sand
I write my poem
where it's read, revised
and then erased
Sketchbook, 6:2, March/April, 2011