KAME WARURU
Jar Breaking
Translation by William Waters A SONG FOR AHN, MYONG HWAOriginal Korean: Phonetic Korean:Ahn-gay-ga god-hee-go
Myong-song-ee sa-ra-chee-cha
Hwa-rha Harm-ee Da-shee sal-lan-nan-da. English:As the mist rises
Venus disappears;
Even the dust sparkles. KAME WARURU*
Jar Breaking
For BashoI had
forgotten
the jar
in the
kitchen,
–had forgotten
the open
windows,
and the cold
outside.It had been
so long
since
I had
heard
voices—
even my own—
I didn’t
notice
the room
grow dark.I don’t
know
how long
I had
been curled
on my side,
staring
at shadows……but when
I heard
CRA-A-CK!—
without blinking—
I knew
the shadows
were just
shadows.The next
morning,
stumbling
in the
kitchen,
I saw
icehad split
the jaropen. (*) As was typical for the time, Matsuo Basho kept a clay jar for drinking water in his cabin; one winter night, it split open, waking him from his sleep. About that experience, he wrote: Kame waruru / yoru no kori no / nezame kana (jar breaking / night ’s ice ’s / waking !) About the Author:
William Waters is an associate professor, in the Department of English at the University of Houston Downtown. Along with Sonja Foss, he is coauthor of Destination Dissertation: A Traveler’s Guide to a Done Dissertation. His research and teaching interests are in writing theory and modern grammar. |
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