Nisei Daughter by Monica Sone

Author:Monica Sone [Sone, Monica]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 0295956887
Publisher: Univeristy of Washington Press
Published: 1995-10-10T22:00:00+00:00

In the spring-filled night

A delicate mauve Silken cloud

Veils the moon’s brilliance

In its soft chiffon mist.

The words used in tanka were quite different from spoken Japanese. Tanka was written in five, seven, five, seven, seven accents in five lines, totaling exactly thirty-one syllables, never more, never less. In reciting the poem, it was sung melodiously in a voice laden with sentiment and trembling emotion to give it proper meaning and effect. The expression nali keli was often employed in these poems. Whenever we wanted to tease Mother, we added this expression to every sentence we uttered. We nudged each other whenever we caught Mother standing in front of a bubbling rice pot, lost in thought. ”Mama, gohan kogeri nali keli! The rice scorcheth.”

Mother smiled at our crude humor, but we had to admit that there was something in tanka, the way Mother used it. With it, she gathered together all the beauty she saw and heard and felt through that window and pulled it into our little apartment for us to enjoy. Sometimes the night was blotted out with heavy fog and we could see nothing. Then Sumiko and I would sit curled on the davenport, reading and listening to the radio while Mother sat in her armchair, mending or sewing, as she listened to the sounds of a fog-bound city. At the end of the quiet evening she would recite to us the tanka which she had created.

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