Monday, August 12, 2024

One Man's Maple Moon: Gray Gutter Tanka by Sanford Goldstein

English Original

again
an all-night
insomnia
the world turns
into a gray gutter

Simply Haiku, 6:4, Winter 2008

Sanford Goldstein 


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

再次
一個通宵
的失眠
世界翻轉
成為灰色的陰溝

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

再次
一个通宵
的失眠
世界翻转
成为灰色的阴沟


Bio Sketch

Sanford Goldstein has been publishing tanka for more than fifty years.  He was born in 1925 and is now 96 years old.  Long ago, he wrote haiku, but decided to focus on tanka. His latest books, three in the last two years, have each said this would be his last.

1 comment:

  1. Sanford's tanka about the impact, Ls 4&5, of insomnia, Ls 1-3, is fresh and multisensorily effective, and the modifiers used to describe insomnia, "again" and "all-night," add emotional weight to the tanka.

    And it might be interesting to do a thematic comparison reading of my insomnia tanka below:

    sleepless again
    looking at water stains
    on the ceiling
    I hug my loneliness
    like an eyeless doll

    A Hundred Gourds, 4:2, March 2015

    in the claw
    of 3 a.m. insomnia
    I'm choked by fear:
    sleeping alone
    among nameless graves

    Its own place: a mindscape of tanka, 2018

    ReplyDelete