Thursday 27 December 2012

haiku 俳句




let in this morning
our kitten still tracks the dew
through cold wooden rooms

露の朝猫の足跡床に染み



walking the dry fields 
returning from the station
the year's first sun



初日の出 駅から歩く枯れ野原


in the tall grasses 
a boy collecting crickets – 
the hazy moon


少年は草にコオロギ朧月


is he still waiting
on the hill along Snake Pond –
the wind in the pines?


丘の上まだ松風に雄蛇ヶ池



(Appeared in Tinfish)


Tuesday 18 December 2012

Three Senryu ・ 3川柳 ・ Lost in Translation





 







1.

The boy liked to roll in waves
filling his clothes with sand
and walk in spring rain



子の服が浪砂にまみれ雨遊ぶ










 2.

Crabgrass rising in my lawn,
the retired fireman smiles crossing the street

草茂る鎌持つあやじ
暇の笑み 

3.
Behind the building the summer moon hides for the long windy night

風が吹くビルに隠れて月涼し










(Tacoma 2003; Tamsui 2012; photos by D. Brink; thanks to Prof. Horikoshi Kazuo for help polishing the Japanese versions)






Tuesday 11 December 2012

Noir Respite from the Recovering City

D. Brink, 2007




A country boy has more time on his hands,
is used to a lull before a friend arrives,
but once the haggling gets going
the headache of it all again
pans out. Inside a week
he’s offering mother’s sandwiches
and his pulse falls to a whisper…
whatever he had to say folded in
the chiaroscuro of the whipping
action of a spatula
in - what drew Caravaggio
I’m sure - the heartrending drum roll
of being so close, almost welcome,
yet broken by encroaching said hinterlands
ever demanding, wilderness abutting
where wolves know when to wallow
in a varicose dawn where yakety-yak alarms
resurrect zombie video game mobs for the du jour
dangling off in pickup trucks down roads less traveled,
the whole kit and caboodle tuned to the conglomerate
as if nomadic time were a luxury
and we were never anywhere anyhow,
never taking a load off the dialectical day
of drifting into subsistence cage effects,
broadcasts inoculating the local grange,
fears bleeding into any film noir dolly or pally.


(Tacoma 2003; Tamsui 2012)