dew

This is my modern English translation of the poem "To the boy Elis" by Georg Trakl.

To the boy Elis
by Georg Trakl
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest,
it announces your downfall.
Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness.

Your brow sweats blood
recalling ancient myths
and dark interpretations of birds' flight.

Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls;
the ripe purple grapes hang suspended
as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness.

These are my modern English translations of Eihei Dogen Kigen, a master of the Japanese waka poetic form. Eihei Dogen Kigen (1200-1253), also called Dogen Zenji, was born in Kyoto, Japan. He was a Japanese Buddhist monk and a prolific poet, writer and philosopher. He was also the founder of the Soto Zen sect (or Sotoshu) and the Eiheiji monastery in early Kamakura-era Japan. In addition to writing Japanese waka, Dogen Kigen was well-versed in Chinese poetry, which he learned to read at age four.

In their haiku the Oriental masters of the form frequently used dew as a metaphor for the transience of life. Some of these poets have used dew metaphorically in a jisei (a type of death poem sometimes called a “zen death poem”) … but then I discovered to my surprise that I had used dew in similar ways quite frequently in my own poetry …

This world?
Moonlit dew
flicked from a crane’s bill.
— Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch