esejieng

This New Year haiku that so joyously celebrate life is – tragically – from Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, where all the bridges to the outside world are down. The splashing that was from tears of joy is now from tears of grief.

1 Azami, January ‘98

autumn morning –
a shadow of a cloud
on the shadow of my hand

Vid Vukasović 1

At the heart of haiku is the interpenetration that is ever-present in the natural world. The undercurrents daily involve the poet who is truly aware. For we are a part of all that we see and sense – inseparably. Thi Anh, a Vietnamese nun, expresses it this way: “We belong to the universe as the wave belongs to the ocean.”

1 Knots, Tolmin, Prijatelj ‘99

An old man
leaning on the fence
says goodbye to the road.

Zoran Raonić 1

How much in three short lines a haiku can say about old age and what good company a neighborhood road can be in the sabi loneliness. The poem evokes a phrase that's been in the back of my mind for half a century: “familiar nurture” – from which arises our grateful acceptance of life-as-it-is.

1 Frogpond, International Edition, XXIV:1, 2001

a trident of cypresses –
the night dives into streams
of star flocks

Joško Armanda 1

(to Vincent)

R. H. Blyht in his Haiku Vol. I says that the real nature of each thing is a poetic one. I warmly welcome Armanda's combining so beautifully poetic imagination with the concreteness of haiku. How clearly we see those trees pointing at the stars; and “dives” is a most expressive word of great immediacy.

1 Haiku Calendar, Ludbreg, 2002

crossing the rope bridge
to greet
the wobbly foal

at the waterfall
moonlight flutters
down the stallion's mane

Matthew Louviere 1

For intuitive juxtaposition, with inner comparison, these haiku are extraordinary – overbrimming with poignant sensory immediacy. The work of a man who is one with the vibration of living experience. The wobbly foal awaiting the rope-bridge crossing really turns our world upside down. It clears our minds as thoroughly as a koan can do. And that “flutter” of moonlight somehow frees us to envision and to feel “beyond our depth.” A haiku moment that extends toward infinity.

1 From “Equine Haiku Sequence,”Azami, “Haiku in English” – Issue No. 35, August ‘96