Tanka by Gabriel Rosenstock

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Gabriel Rosenstock’s Tanka Series – 1

 

1.

they drink to forget You
to forget Your voice
Your loveliness
             consumed by the dark
             as if they never knew You

 

The Drinkers
by 1861 – By Honoré Daumier

 

2.

leaves fly from trees
as though they were birds migrating
not knowing where to go
              take me, beloved, now
              winds of autumn rattle me

 

 

Autumn Landscape with a Flock of Turkeys
1872–73
Jean-François Millet

 

3.

‘the dragon that has scaled the heights
laments his coming fall’
it has been said
      nowhere for me to fall now
      but in Your arms, beloved

Dragon Awakens – By
Theodor Severin Kittelsen

 

4.

I have built You a folly
come and view it
it is nothing really
         birds will come and delight in it
         in its sheer nothingness

Landscape with a Fantastic Castle –
1865 –
George Sand

 

About the Author

Photo: Jim Berkeley.

Gabriel Rosenstock is a bilingual poet (in Irish & English), haikuist, tankaist, playwright, novelist, short story writer, essayist, translator, writer for children and champion of ‘forlorn causes’ – the phrase is Hugh MacDiarmid’s. He is a Lineage Holder of Celtic Buddhism and a member of Aosdána (the Irish academy of arts and letters). Among his awards is the Tamgha-i-Khidmat medal (Pakistan) for services to literature. Gabriel’s most recent volume of poetry is Glengower: Poems for No One in Irish and English (The Onslaught Press).