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

Monday, September 12, 2016

Selected Tanka Prose: Old Photos of the Future

At dusk I sit in front of my computer reflecting upon the bright, promising smiles of my childhood, youth, and early thirties. I scan them one by one.

in the photos
we have ceased to be
the same…
I am his outcome
he, my memory

The setting sun sinks slowly on my glasses, and in the deep of the computer screen a gloomy and bemused face is mirrored.

Pirene's Fountain, 4:9, April 2011