English translation of "To the boy Elis" by Georg Trakl
This is my modern English translation of the poem "To the boy Elis" by Georg Trakl.
Reviews
No reviews yet.
This is my modern English translation of the poem "To the boy Elis" by Georg Trakl.
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