The great haijin (haiku master) Bash¿ once advised his followers and disciples not to follow him, but to emulate the masters of old who had inspired Bash¿, such as the medieval grandmaster of tanka, Saigy¿.Gabriel Rosenstock, poet and haikuist, decided to apprentice himself to the wandering spirit of Saigy¿ by transcreating his tanka in Irish and English. He has followed the classic configuration of 31 syllables in the 5-7-5-7-7 pattern. In this way, Rosenstock hoped to master the meditative, compressed form of tanka verse, the oldest poetic genre still being cultivated widely today, and become a 21st century tankaist.