English Original
when I was walking
through the dreary field,
under my arm
a wall clock for sale
abruptly chimed
Kaleidoscope, 2007
Shuji Terayama
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
當我正在穿越
荒涼田野的時候
夾在我腋下
要出售的掛鐘
突然響起來
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
当我正在穿越
荒凉田野的时候
夹在我腋下
要出售的挂钟
突然响起来
Bio Sketch
The avant-garde stage and film director, poet, critic, author and founder of the experimental theater group Tenjo Sajiki, Shuji Terayama was born in 1935 in Aomori, Japan. He started writing tanka in his late teens and received the Tanka Kenkyu Award for Emerging Poets. He published several tanka collections before he stopped writing at the age of 30. Many of his tanka read more like scenes from a movie scene or short story. He died in 1983. The first English language collection of his tanka, Kaleidoscope, was published by The Hokuseido Press in 2008 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his death.
This is a fine example of Shuji's tanka infused with evocative imagery created by surreal imagination.
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