English Original
cleaning out
Mother’s lingerie drawer
the tears in her stockings
sewn up so tightly --
all my unanswered questions
Winter Deepens, 2018
Margaret Chula
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
清理
母親的內衣抽屜
她絲襪上的破洞
縫得如此緊密 --
我所有未解的疑問
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
清理
母亲的内衣抽屉
她丝袜上的破洞
缝得如此紧密 --
我所有未解的疑问
Bio Sketch
Margaret Chula has published two collections of tanka: Always Filling, Always Full and Just This. She has promoted tanka through her one-woman dramatization, “Three Women Who Loved Love”, which traveled to Krakow, New York, Boston, Portland, Ottawa, and Ogaki, Japan. And from 2011 to 2015, Maggie served as president of the Tanka Society of America.
The tanka shifts seamlessly from the literal act of examining a mended garment in Ls 1–4 to the metaphorical realization in L 5 of how the speaker’s mother lived her life.
ReplyDeleteL 3, “the tears in her stockings,” is particularly effective, both thematically and symbolically. The word tears functions as a quiet, poignant pun, evoking both the physical rips in the fabric and the tears of grief. The tightly sewn stitches suggest emotional repression and a deliberate closing-off, subtly preparing the way for the poem’s final revelation.
L 5, “all my unanswered questions,” carries considerable emotional weight because the preceding lines evoke a woman who quietly mended what was torn, perhaps concealing her own wounds and leaving aspects of her inner life unexplored. The final line transforms the physical act of sewing into a metaphor for emotional concealment, leaving the reader with a lingering, haunting sense of loss and the enduring mystery of a mother’s unspoken life.