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

Monday, August 30, 2021

Afghan Girl Tanka

This Brave New World, XVIII
written on the eve of the Afghanistan withdrawal deadline

endless war
or full troop withdrawal ?
at the airport fence
an Afghan girl stares at clouds
with darker shades of gray



FYI: Incorporating five of my tanka about the Afghanistan war into one tanka sequence for reflections:

All That Remains

endless war
or full troop withdrawal ?
at the airport fence
an Afghan girl stares at clouds
with darker shades of gray

NeverEnding Story, August 30, 2021

last Americans
lifted off the embassy roof
in Saigon --
now some hundred Afghans
cling to a moving US plane

NeverEnding Story, August 18 2021

the face
of an Afghan girl 
who stares
into the camera
at us ... at Death

Revision, Cattails, October 2018

Death
a dust-faced coalman
unfolds
one body bag, then another ...
gathering dark in Kabul

Revision, Bright Stars, III, 2014

FYI: The Korea Times, August 29: "Double deja vu of Afghanistan with volatile future:"

... The modern history of Afghanistan repeats itself as a graveyard of empires. It started from the United Kingdom during the imperial era to be followed by the former Soviet Union during the Cold War and the U.S. over the last two decades.

Afghanistan is also back to square one before former U.S. President Bush launched the war against terror following 9/11 in 2001....


AddedTwo Hundred and Fifty-Seventh Entry, Coronavirus Poetry Diary

breakthrough cases surge
sheltered in my attic room
I feel safe ... for now