Blooms at my window,
But the young nurse’s smile is
Covered by a mask.
Prisoners, detailed,
Shovel soot on unclaimed dead
In the green of spring.
This March witnessed drought.
Death is a bend in the road;
Dying shields our view.
As many readers will know, the haiku is a Japanese poetic form which, in English at least, is rendered in three lines, containing respectively five, seven, and five syllables. Each syllable roughly corresponds to an 'on' in Japanese, whereby this is more akin to a sound, and not a single word, i.e. it is a discrete phonic entity meaning that, e.g. a two-syllable word in Japanese might contain three or even four 'on'. The Japanese masters of the haiku were not always constrained to the 5-7-5 pattern we note here.
Traditionally, two contrasting ideas are juxtaposed in a haiku; a 'cutting word' or 'kireji' is used to transition between them; and often a 'kigo', or reference to a season, is included.
In the second of my own contributions, above, the reference is to burials in New York, and the inmates of a state penitentiary on Hart Island who were filmed carrying out what has bis dato been part of their duty.
