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
![](https://www.modernliterature.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/honore-daumier-1-769x1024.jpg)
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
![](https://www.modernliterature.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Autumn-landscape-1024x835.jpg)
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
![](https://www.modernliterature.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/theodore.jpg)
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
![](https://www.modernliterature.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/castle-1024x781.jpg)
1865 –
George Sand
About the Author
![](https://www.modernliterature.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/gabriel-and-gandhi-300x238.jpg)
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).