39. Poetry by Irina Moga
Editor’s Note: In an email, Irina shared the compelling backstory of “East Sea” with me. I must share it with you, as it provides such a meaningful, historical context to her already exquisite poem.
Irina stated that she enjoyed writing the three tankas in “East Sea” as a reply to a tanka by Takuboku Ishikawa (1866-1912).
From Wikipedia, the tanka by Ishikawa:
On the white sand
Of the beach of a small island
In the Eastern Sea.
I, my face streaked with tears,
Am playing with a crab.
Irina’s response, published well over a hundred years later, provides a profound sense of timelessness.
East Sea
forward silence — a
loop of quantum resonance
brushes off tears from
your eyes as you gaze across
The East Sea, swathed in moonlight.
string of small islands —
beaches covered by white sand
where our paths crossed once
— a Theory of Everything
excluding love
kneeling in the sand
among crabs, the day after
our breakup — a wave,
like a messenger of particles
circles my ankles.
Copenhagen Interpretation
gravitational
redshift, clocks fending off your
blurred insomniac hours
hyper-sleep passing
mortality through the gate
of an afterthought
the quantum breakpoint
of superimposed perceptions
— Schrödinger’s catspaw
stochastic morning
seen through white cherry blossoms —
observer observed
Irina Moga
Irina Moga is a Romanian-born Canadian poet and author of several poetry books. Her latest collection of poems, Variations sans palais, published with Éditions L’Harmattan (France), was awarded the inaugural literary prize Dina Sahyouni in 2022. Irina’s work has appeared in literary magazines such as: Canadian Literature, carte-blanche, PRISM International online, Foreign Literary Journal, NYQ Magazine, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @pictopoems.