Never Ending Story / One Man's Maple Moon

 

 Translated by Chen-ou Liu

English Original

only few left

to hug on New Year's Eve --

two reflections

in the cracked window,

Mt. Fuji and the old man

Excellence, the Nineth Mt. Fuji Tanka Contest,  2024

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

只有少數人留下

在除夕夜相互擁抱 --

兩個映影

在破裂的窗戶裡, 

富士山和一位老人

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

只有少数人留下

在除夕夜相互拥抱 --

两个映影

在破裂的窗户里,

富士山和一位老人

 

 

 

Comment by Chen-ou Liu:

 

Chen-ou LiuJanuary 28, 2025 at 10:27 AM

Ls 1-2 describe an unexpected and less joyful New Year's Eve scene, setting the theme and mood; and L3-5 might give a hint of what's happening in their preceding lines.

Symbocally rich Ls 3&4, two "reflections" in the "cracked" window, are poignant, adding emotional weight to the tanka.

And socioculturally significant and spiritually rich Mt. Fuji in L5 might give this lonely, poor old man the strength to face the challenges in the coming year.

 

================================

 

 Ls 1-2 descriu o scenă neașteptată și mai puțin veselă din ajunul Anului Nou, stabilind tema și atmosfera; iar L3-5 ar putea da un indiciu a ceea ce se întâmplă în rândurile lor anterioare.

Ls 3&4, bogate din punct de vedere simbolic, două „reflecții” în fereastra „crăpată”, sunt emoționante, adăugând greutate emoțională tanka.

Iar Mt. Fuji din L5, semnificativ din punct de vedere sociocultural și bogat din punct de vedere spiritual, ar putea să-i dea acestui bătrân singuratic și sărac puterea de a face față provocărilor din anul care vine.

 

 

LOTHLORIEN POETRY JOURNAL, January 2025, Editor Strider Marcus Jones

                                             Kira

A piece of heaven for tourists with its fauna and flora, the Danube Delta is tough on the locals living on a strip of land, as they are dependent on boats at all times. Many of them drifted away like floating reeds, but the elders remained. They are deeply rooted in the banks of the Danube. It’s a mild, autumn day, same as it was fifty years ago, when the cranes were leaving and the fisherman brought Kira by boat to be his bride.

He fares her back now; there is no graveyard here...

                             scythe on shoulder –

                             how beautifully grows the grass

                             in her eyes

 

 

               Hidden paths

In the harsh light of noon, the woman’s hand over the eyes trembles like a broken wing She lowered the garden fence, so she can see as far as the horizon, where someone appears now and then, but never reaches her. As the  sparrows are dozing off among blue morning glories, the silence seems too hard to be broken, but a ship’s horn sounds and some ray of hope is flitting across her blushing face. Time to pull off the weeds on the pathway home again...

two cups of tea  –

coming at the right time

a cloud of rain

 

 

                                              Nostalgia

There comes a day that seems like the very last one, when you feel the urge to take the final steps, where you also took your first, so I take my backpack and head to the train station. Once arrived, I wend my way through the blue-eyed thistles (childhood friends). Everything is unchanged, only the forest looks like a defeated army. A motorbike raises a monster of dust who is about to engulf me, but rain drops collapse it. I finally can see my slumped shoulders house and a fluttering flowered dress.

                         homesickness –

greeting me with open arms          

the scarecrow

Daily Haiga - January 2025

 

The Pan Haiku Review issue 4 (December 2024)

 

The Pan Haiku Review issue 4 (December 2024)

haibun & tanka-bun edition

Winter 2024

PHR4 editor: Alan Summers

Parking lots

There was still grass here last year, now it’s a new parking lot. A burning-hot asphalt carpet laid over the flower bed, in front of my grandparents' house, where I have always returned, enjoying the orchard, and the little lake that has dried up in the meantime.

Fewer trees, many more parking lots, so they cut down the orchards too.

The only one left is chainsaw redefined, I feel it's my grandfather's walnut tree, by the way he holds the head bowed, looking at his beloved land.

 

the branches of a tree

tied up behind its back –

tightlipped birds

 

Omnibus

I knock on our house door, but it's not my mother who opens. Seeing my doubt in front of the door, the wind smacks it against the wall. Something that looks like a being, a steamy silhouette wearing a long flowery printed dress, swirls around, engulfs

me, while its imprints fly all over the room. What a fresh plum blossom scent!

Suddenly, the wind calms down, the clouds wash out, and the ghost is gone, but all these white petals left on the floor are a sign that I'm not the only one coming home now and then...

 

honeycomb –

a butterfly alights

on the sweet knife

ESUJ-H / JANUARY 2025

 Judge: Emiko Miyashita (Haiku poet)

 Judge: Yuzo Ono (Haiku poet)

ramshackle house --
in a bicycle basket
chirping baby birds

Haiga im focus, Januar 2025

 

Failed haiku - A Journal of English Senryu, Issue 106, 2025

 

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