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

Tuesday, June 1, 2021

For the Kids Tanka

This Brave New World, VII

written in response to Al Jazeera's June 1 report, Canada: ‘This one unmarked grave is what genocide looks like: Advocates demand real government action to honour 215 Indigenous children whose remains found at residential school

bulky reports
on indigenous peoples
gather dust ...
we just lower flags for the kids
in an unmarked mass grave


FYI: The first report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which was issued in November 1996. is five-volume, 4,000-page long, and the latest one, "The Final Report of the National Inquiry Into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls,"which was released in 2019, is 1071-page long.


Added: Two Hundred and Sixteenth Entry, Coronavirus Poetry Diary

one day less
and one day older
at first light
this winter stillness
of my quarantine life


Added: Two Hundred and Seventeenth Entry

this smile
not the one I expected ...
an expanse
of blue in the eyes
of a masked cashier