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

Monday, June 23, 2025

Worker in Words Tanka

midnight hush ...
I, a worker in words
straddle the line
between the abstract, death
and the concrete, aging body



Added:

the brick shack
with boarded windows
facing a graveyard
in gathering dusk
a torn-up chapbook: I AM


FYI: For more about death poems, see "To the Lighthouse: Jisei, Japanese Death Poems" And  you can get a free PDF copy of the book here  and here is the link to Janine Beichman's detailed review of the book, "Yoel Hoffmann as Japanologist: Japanese Death Poems."