Shamrock
Haiku Journal
of the Irish Haiku Society
Focus on
RUSSIA
evening...
watching silent films
in the windows across the street
writing in the dark
unaware that my pen
has run out of ink
-- Ivan Akhmetiev
Drought...
the world of the pond-scater
narrowing steadily
Misted glass...
the bus takes away
the mark of my palm
Film on the end of the world –
teletext: weather forecast
for tomorrow
-- Daria Batalina
old photographs
father's hand on my shoulder
a maple leaf
fancying the sea
in a stuffy carriage –
easy to breathe now
-- Elena Katsuba
Tired of stargazing,
I look down –
puddle full of stars
Poets at the pedestal –
covering them all,
shadow of the statue
Pigeon in the room
flies into the mirror
I reflect off it
-- Konstantin Kedrov
end of winter –
how thin
the tube of green bice!
flying up from the pool,
the swan beats back
against his shadow
pierced by
the stubble of the mowed lawn,
night sky
white winter meadow –
steam rising
from a lost mitten
merging
to go down together –
two drops of water
-- Natasha Levi
wet night
hanging over the city –
chimneys hissing
both the wind
and I
back and forth
by the sea
where the rainbow ends –
my/your lips
-- Alexander Makarov-Krotkov
standing speechless
through an urge
to speak
-- Ira Novitskaya
Our dacha at sunset –
neighbours behind the fence
sawing silence
In the underpass
a fiddler pausing
listening to our footsteps
A beach in Fiumicino –
children build ruins
out of sand
-- Sofia Russinova
Mushroom-pickers
empty bottle gatherers...
I prepare for a journey
-- Tatyana Shcherbina
May morning candles
a chestnut-tree
in white flames
quivering timidly
the aspen's reflection
in chilly spring water
moonless night –
rereading your letter,
this time by heart
autumn morning
a tramp gives his place on the bench
to falling snow
-- Valeria Simonova (Russia/Italy)
deeper now...
shadow of the bow stabbing
the fiddler's shadow
-- Polina Strizhova
Belated guests
in the garden chairs
snow-drifts
-- Julia Voronkova
Surrounded by
Russian, Bulgarian and English words,
cat's meow
-- Galina Yershova
standing guard
over the Chinese restaurant
a carnivorous plant
a pedestrian
slipping on a puddle,
falling onto himself
-- Kristina Zeytounian-Belous (Russia/France)
Translated from the Russian by Anatoly Kudryavitsky
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Vera Markova’s ‘Ten Haiku Lessons’
by Anatoly Kudryavitsky
Vera Markova (1907 - 1995), Russian poet and academic, was renowned for her translations from classical Japanese poetry. She began translating Japanese tanka and haiku at the end of the 1960s, and less than ten years later published her translations from thirty poets, from Saigyô to Bashô to Kobayashi Issa, in the anthology Classical Japanese Poetry, which has since been regularly reprinted in Russia. A very interesting poet in her own right (and a life-long friend of the famous Marina Tsvetayeva), Vera Markova was a fluent Japanese speaker and travelled to Japan twice, on one occasion to receive from Emperor Hirohito an honorary medal commemorating her efforts in promoting Japanese culture abroad.
In her essay entitled ‘Hokku’, published in the afore-mentioned anthology, Prof. Markova analysed Bashô’s work, and in the following years used some of the topics highlighted in that essay in her lectures to university students. She taught them to appreciate Japanese tanka and haiku, but also tried to stir up their creativity.
Later, Prof. Markova wrote a short text offering a few suggestions for aspiring haiku writers. She added a few of her favourite quotations from Bashô, and at a later stage even included the opinion I gave while discussing the ‘Hokku’ essay with her, making me the third partner in that imaginary conversation, which was most flattering. She arranged parts of the text, belonging to its three authors, in a manner resembling that of the old Japanese masters of renga, linked verse. Her students used to call the text ‘Vera Markova’s ten haiku lessons’.
These ‘Haiku Lessons’ are reprinted here. I should mention that, as some readers may already have guessed, Vera Markova was the person who once introduced me to haiku, and so started me on an exciting and unpredictable journey…
VM – Vera Markova
AK
– Anatoly Kudryavitsky
(First published in Poetry Ireland Newsletter, November / December 2006)
Trees
by Asya Shneiderman (St. Petersburg, Russia)
---------------------------<->----------------------------
cold slams the air
clearing the bird-table
a sparrow-hawk
sitting with you...
burning through till dawn
the corridor light
deep in the wood
leaning against a pine tree
afternoon sun
insomnia –
through the door in my head
another door
-- Caroline Gourlay (England)
a new year . . .
watching hare inch
out of her warren
steadfast, the
horse, grazing in
her shadow
staring wistfully
at the moon . . .
year of the dog
-- Robert D Wilson (USA/Philippines)
sick in bed
my cast-off clothes
moonlit
setting sun
a tractor's sound turns into
cricket songs
dense snowfall
the black cat disappears
behind the sofa
-- Dietmar Tauchner (Austria)
mosquitoes and young couples in love in another language
autumn illness the white noise of crickets
waking in a strange place to a voice not my own
after a night of drinking all the way home downhill
a wet-black boulder blue december sky
-- Jim Kacian (USA)
poor singing voices
nevertheless
they have built a nest
a small kitchen
the toaster
warms one corner
Impressionism
ladies with parasols
walk to the next painting
-- John Stevenson (USA)
a tiny brown frog
leaps from the spring pool
back into camouflage
Holy City market
hawkers ignore
the call to prayer
news of a birth
now news of a death…
waning harvest moon
-- Maeve O’Sullivan (Ireland)
the Japanese character:
one signpost
so many different roads
waiting for the bus
someone has scattered
seeds of orange poppy
fresh sheets on the line
torn ones draping
the young gooseberries
-- Judy Kendall (England)
Autumn chill
a skein of geese tangles
around the moon
Boating at summer's end –
the river slips through
my fingers
Blue twilight –
falling from wet branches
the scent of lilac
--Sylvia Forges-Ryan (USA)
New Year cards –
good wishes
threaded on a string
winding road –
the moon gallivants
from left to right
dusk –
the moon slowly meets
the streetlights
-- Katherine Gallagher (Australia/England)
Old Curiosity Shop –
laquered dolls
out in the mid-day sun
art café –
the security guy hums
a James Bond theme
beachcombing...
a periwinkle rotates
deeper into itself
-- Alan Summers (England)
---------------------------<->----------------------------
A Crow’s Time
by Alan Summers
the sun is high skinny lizards freeze in their own tableau
just the angry buzzing grind of cicadas
coarse grass curls
round my walking shoes
an ant enters my bag
I move through parched grass and fallen ringbarked gumtree
to a plain of rocks with high bramble to face a narrow path past caves
once home to something very ancient
fading last note
the torresian crow’s sound
a darkening sky
now under a black sky stars more bright than I've seen before
that shift move vibrate to suggest something more
it’s my last sighting of Jupiter above Venus
susurrus of moths
round fire that flickers on
like the night
it's brittle cutting cold the moon's no longer full
this brutal simplicity of a night a crow’s shade of feather
it spirals towards
the southern cross
my woodsmoke embers
quiet and dark then a rustle reminds me of the Dreamtime Dingo
white and feral imagination lends fear to a night that leers at me
it’s a long time before I see a lightening but then
a quickening between two trees that’s a hurt violet the morning
rekindling the fire
past pale blue trees
a red sunrise