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

Monday, September 30, 2013

Colors of Loneliness, A Haiku Sequence

a corridor that runs
off into infinity
Mom! I'm coming home

Moon Festival ...
the attic and I share
a day of rest

running away
from myself and my shadow
the smell of formalin

grief knocks
the wind out of me
drifting snowflakes

New Year's dinner for one
I pick up the chopsticks
and yet … and yet …



Notes:

1 The Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival in the West, is the second most important festival celebrated by the Chinese people, and it is held on the 15th day of the 8th month in the Chinese calendar, during a full moon.

2 "formalin: a clear solution of formaldehyde in water. A 37% solution is used for fixing and preserving biologic specimens for pathologic and histologic examination."

NeverEnding Story, August 14th, 2013

Saturday, September 28, 2013

And the Spring Will Come, A Haibun

He can write in English, states the dog-eared Chinese-English dictionary on the coffee-stained desk. A German Shepherd lives with him, says the attic wall with an old map of Taiwan on it. But he can't stand Canadian food, observes a line of jars of salted bamboo shoots. Except food, everything looks OK, they say in unison.

the stillness
of this morning …
tenth winter

Haibun Today, 7:3, September 2013 (included in my review essay, titled What Happens in [David Cobb’s Conception of] Haibun: A Critical Study for Readers Who Want More)
Contemporary Haibun, 15, 2014

Friday, September 27, 2013

Confucius Said, at Forty I Had No More Doubts

A Haibun for 劉鎮歐


Every day and night, I ask myself what if?  Whether things might have been different or better.  If anything more could have come of it.  But I died four days before my 40th birthday, on a moonless night.

distant sirens ...
across the winter sky
a shooting star

(included in my review essay, titled What Happens in [David Cobb’s Conception of] Haibun:A Critical Study for Readers Who Want More)

Note: The title comes from Chapter II of  The Analects, one of the foundational texts of Confucianism: At fifteen my heart was set on learning; at thirty I stood firm; at forty I had no more doubts; at fifty I knew the will of heaven; at sixty my ear was obedient; at seventy I could follow my heart's desire without overstepping the boundaries of what was right.

Confucius's retrospection of his own life has been the model for the Chinese people for more than 2500 years.

A Haiku about Making Love

listening to
the voices of summer dawn...
the night we made love


Honorable Mention (Vanguard), World Haiku Review, August 2013

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Another Year, A Haiku Sequence

hometown memories...
spring water
against my legs

something old
that is always new
summer stars

autumn sunset
on a yellow brick road
I go skyward

a fleeting dream
in winter moonlight
notes of an erhu

my dog and I
in a patch of sunlight
New Year's morning


Frogpond, 36:2, Summer 2013
Fear of Dancing, Red Moon Anthology of English Language Haiku 2013

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

A Haiku about Turning the Other Cheek

cherry petals
on my cheek
I turn the other


Sakura Award,  2013 Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational


Note: Turning the Other Cheek originates from the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament. In Chapter 5of the Gospel of Matthew, an alternative for "an eye for an eye" is given by Jesus:

38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Butterfly's Dream Haiku

alone at dawn
amid cherry blossoms
a butterfly’s dream


Sakura Award, 2013 Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational                             

Monday, September 23, 2013

Between the Spoken and Unspoken

A Tanka Set for Anne Lister's Spiritual Daughters


they cursed and burned
Anne Lister and Ann Walker
in effigy
XXX on her copy
of The Well of Loneliness

a thin layer of dust
on her bookshelf
The Diaries of Anne Lister
leans against Emma
in the pale moonlight

NeverEnding Story, August 9, 2013


Note: Anne Lister (1791–1840) was a well-off Yorkshire landowner, diarist, mountaineer and traveller. Throughout her life she kept diaries which chronicled the details of her daily life, including her lesbian relationships, her financial concerns, her industrial activities and her work improving Shibden Hall. Her diaries contain more than 4,000,000 words and about a sixth of them—those concerning the intimate details of her romantic and sexual relationships—some parts in her diaries were written in code. The code, derived from a combination of algebra and Ancient Greek, was deciphered in the 1930s. Lister is often called "the first modern lesbian" for her clear self-knowledge and openly lesbian lifestyle…. -- excerpted from the Wikipedia entry, Anne Lister

Sunday, September 22, 2013

If on an Autumn’s Night a Sojourner, A Haiku Sequence

written on the night of the Chinese Moon Festival

walking aimlessly
Taipei moonlight
in Ajax streets

a home
away from home
harvest moon

moon viewing
a long shadow
beside me

tenth autumn...
tonight's moon not like
the one back home

NeverEnding Story, September 19, 2013

Friday, September 20, 2013

Love Lock Tanka

our love lock
dropped into the river
of lost souls...
a crimson leaf
drifts across the moon

Bamboo Hut, 1:1, 3013

 
Note: The river of lost souls refers to the Animas River in southwest Colorado. The Spaniards named it El Rio de las Animas Perdidas - River of Lost Souls

Thursday, September 19, 2013

A Tanka about Anne Frank's House

in spring rain
a long visitor's line
at Anne Frank House ...
did the church bell ring
on that fateful day?

Bamboo Hut, 1:1, 3013

Hooded Skeleton Tanka

standing quietly
outside the window
of my spring dreams
a hooded skeleton
with a long scythe

Bamboo Hut, 1:1, 3013

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Moonlit Eyes Tanka

submerged by talk
about this young woman
veiled in black . . .
but today I swim
in her moonlit eyes

Bamboo Hut, 1:1, 2013

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Three Rivers Tanka

Version I:

a paper boat
made from early drafts
of my poem
sails down the river ...
moonlit memories


Version II:

a paper boat
made from early drafts
of my poem
sails down the river
of moonlit memories


Version III:

a paper boat
made from early drafts
of my poem
sails down the river ...
of moonlit memories


NeverEnding Story, July 31, 2013


Note: There are three different river images in the tanka above: realist, metaphoric, and realist cum metaphoric (in the stream of consciousness).  In Version III, the prepositional phrase in L5 is mainly used to disrupt the reader’s expectation, making the spatiotemporal shift.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Red Light District Tanka

in De Wallen
the summer sunset sky
through a brothel window ...
one woman looks out

another looks in

Tanka Third Prize, Diogen Summer Haiku Contest, 2013


Note: De Wallen is the largest and best known red-light district in Amsterdam.

Old Map Tanka

go back
where you came from...

the crackle
of unfolding a map
in winter twilight


Kernels, #2, Summer 2013

Friday, September 13, 2013

Other 9/11s, A Haiku Sequence

for Susan Sontag, author of Regarding the Pain of Others, who claimed that: The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.


first September Eleventh
in the sky and on Chilean streets
blood, fire and smoke

stardust ...
spiraling numbers etched
into the cenotaph

a veiled woman
touches the names
September Eleventh



Note: Today marks the 40th anniversary of the U.S.-backed military coup in Chile that ousted democratically-elected Salvador Allende in 1973 and led to a 17-year repressive dictatorship led by General Augusto Pinochet. For more information, see Democracy Now! in Depth: 1973 Chilean Coup
 
September 12th Headline News from Democracy Now!
 
As the United States marked the 12th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Chile commemorated what is known as the first 9/11 — the September 11, 1973 — the U.S.-backed coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende. In a ceremony at the presidential palace where her father was killed, Allende’s daughter, Chilean Senator Isabel Allende, said "truth and justice" is the only path to healing from the coup’s lingering damage.
 
Isabel Allende: "Only truth and justice will allow us to come back together as a country. And the ethical values and the values that never again break the democracy, never again have a coup, never to break constitutional order again, never again to hunt someone down because of their beliefs, never again torture or state terrorism."
 

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

A Haiku about Matsushima

Matsushima...
holding this moonlit night
under the pines

 
 
Note: Below is a well-known apocryphal haiku often attributed to Matsuo Bashō  who, upon the sight of  Matsushima, was at a loss for words,
 
Matsushima ah!
A-ah, Matsushima, ah!
Matsushima, ah!

Monday, September 9, 2013

Here and Now, A Haibun

I awaken to watery sunlight filtering through the curtains. I had the same dream again.
 
A cave on the cliff of a high peak.  Above it, there is a rusty plaque on which “Barrier of Death” is inscribed. I walk inside the cave only to find a mossy statue: an old man, who looks like me, sits cross-legged.
 
Suddenly, a throaty voice, “bleached bones on my mind,” brings me back to daylight.
 
fruit trees blooming…
grain by grain, I eat
a bowl of rice



Ghost Month haiku

end of Ghost Month
the moon and I make our way
through the night


Kernels, #2, Summer 2013

Sunday, September 8, 2013

A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Haibun

“Anyway, finally amid the pain, I felt something slipping out. This fiery hot mass like the sun. The moment the baby burst into…its first cry…” she wipes the tears from her eyes, “was the most painfully beautiful moment for me.”

“There is always something new under the sun,” says her youngest sister with an awkward smile while squeezing her 10-year-old daughter’s hand.

shooting stars...
if I had a child
of my own

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Nevermore, A Haibun

"I should have killed all these clichés when I had the chance," I yell out in the dream. Sunlight slipping through the attic window onto the empty side of my bed.

the raven settles 
on a maple branch --
Good Friday morning

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Black Butterfly Haiku

a black butterfly
drifting from grave to grave ...
distant echoes


Presence, 48, July 2013

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Monday, September 2, 2013

Is Something Missing?, A Haiku Sequence

with two different endings


George Zimmerman trial --
no sound in the black and white
Rodney King beating video

under the Florida sun
Martin Luther King Jr.
in a hoodie

a trial is not
a morality play ....

killing a mockingbird

Trayvon Martin Day
a white girl shares her popsicle
with a black boy

or

Trayvon Martin Day
Justice and Peace painted
in black and white


NeverEnding Story, July 14, 2013

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Snowstorm Haiku for Seamus Heaney, Poet of "the Silent Things"

Toronto snowstorm ...
writing haiku to escape
the fear of silence
 
NeverEnding Story, 31 August, 2013


Note: The Irish poet Seamus Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013), who won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, died yesterday at the age of 74. Outside the haiku poetry community, he was one of few Western poets who recognized and appreciated Japanese haiku's influence on English poetry. On 24 November, 2007, he published an article, titled "The Pathos of Things," where he expressed his view of haiku in relation to English poetry in general and to the Irish lyrical tradition in particular, and his close examination of Ezra Pound's Metro Poem (first English language hokku). For  more information, see my 'Dark Wings of Night' post, titled 'Seamus Heaney and His View of Haiku.'