Chen-ou Liu's Translation Project: First English-Chinese Haiku and Tanka Blog

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Yet Again: A Gogyohka Sequence

moonlight
creeps in the door ajar
her heart
has been closed since
azaleas blanketed the mountain

misty morning
I open The Art of Loving
her letter
falls out
Dear John...

that starlit night
full of her promises...
a column of smoke
burning returned letters
I open our album

raining outside
I sit at a window
drinking coffee --
the youthful self walks into
the summer of 1967


Atlas Poetica, #8.

Note: The concluding tanka is anthologized in Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka Vol. 3 (2010).