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
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
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
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
About the Author
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).