Spring hills faintly melting seem to smile
Summer hills of pale green seem to trickle
Autumn hills bright and clean seem all dressed up
Winter hills faintly sad seem to sleep
The origin of haiku may be spontaneous but its craft depends on a lot of structural and exacting norms. This process, which is the essence of the haiku art, has no spontaneity. It is like a jeweller’s craft after “the feeling” has been caught. In fact haikus represent a delicate balance between spontaneous feeling like what Zen called “Satori” and subsequent craft.
Kakvi to glasovi cuju se u mraku,
Nad nocnim poljem, visoko u zraku?
Ko li to pjeva? Ah, nista, sitnica:
Jedna u letu poludjela ptica.
Nadlijece sebe i oblake trome,
S vjetrom se igra i pjeva o tome.
Svu svoju vjeru u krilima noseci,
Kuda to leti, sto bi htjela doseci?
Nije li vrijeme da gnijezdo vije?
Kad bude hladno da se u njem grije.
Ko li te posla pjevati u tminu?
Sleti u nizu, u bolju sudbinu.
Ne mari za to poludjela ptica.
Pjeva o vjetru sto je svu golica.
A kad je umor jednom bude srvo,
Nece za odmor nac nijedno drvo.
Who is it that sings in the night
Above the dark fields, high out of sight?
Who is it calling? Ah, it’s nothing,
Just a crazy bird flying.
It soars above lazy clouds,
Playing with the wind, so loud.
All its faith in a wing,
Where does it go, what will it bring?
Should not it be in its nest now?
Wintertime is for settling down.
Who allowed you out into the gloom?
Return to earth now, safe from doom.
It worries not, this crazy bird aflight.
It still sings as it soars through the night.
When it tires from flying, that will be it,
Not a single tree, nothing left upon to sit.
This paper published in the Arab Journal for the Arts looks interesting:
“Tribal belonging in Pre-Islamic poetry (Between kinship and the awareness of kinship)” by Ali Asha, Department of Arabic, Faculty of Science and Arts, Al Hashimia University, Zarqa, Jordan.
The study looks at tribal belonging in Pre-Islamic poetry through studying some selected models of this poetry. In addition, considering poetry as the prominent factor for the cultural identity for Pre-Islamic community, the study investigates the social structure of the Arabic Pre-Islamic community and its integration in Pre-Islamic poem.
[…]
This kinship awareness made the poetic self try to create balance between power and truth, seeking “compliment� and “praise� and at the same time to resist the crumbling situation of the community that was exhausted by tribal conflict and dispute.
Stajati pred bijelim papirom,
Jos neispisanim, i znati:
Dosad su sastavljeni milijuni pjesama
Na svim jezicima Svijeta
I za milijune ljudi na Zemlji
Spremljeno je vec oruzje da ih unisti —
A ti hoces da se cuje i tvoj krik:
Mir Svijetu! Sloboda Svijetu!
I svakome na stolu kruh!
Standing before a blank sheet of paper
Not a single word on it, I realize;
Men have written millions of poems
In every language of the World
For the millions of people on Earth
There is a weapon ready to destroy them —
But you also want your cry to be heard:
Peace to the World! Freedom to the World!
Bread on the table for everyone!
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995