Haiku: patient verbal renunciation

Recently I have begun to write Haiku, a form of Japanese poetry. I have a passion for words - their meanings and sounds, the capacity of words to convey human thought, express human emotion, announce personal intention. In the beginning was the Word - a creative purposeful power that calls into being, that names what is created because it is personal and relational, that creates the reality of goodness by pronouncing what is made - good.

Haiku is a disciplined shaping of words to express truth with purity and singleness of thought. In its classical form it has three lines of 5 then 7, then 5 syllables. Not much scope for polysyllabic sesquipidalian show-offs then! But a well conceived and constructed Haiku verse can contain depth of emotion, clarity of insight, intensity of thought - so I find it an interesting way of trying to contain - not in the sense of constrain, but in the sense of hold, the meaning of biblical text.

A recent example of this for me was Advent, when I spent some time exploring the book of Lamentations in the company of two women commentators - their books are on the sidebar. It seemed important to hear the voices of those acquainted with grief, and with God, in a time when we too hear the lamentations of dispossessed, violated people. I offer only three of what for me became an exercise in reverent articulation, patient verbal renunciation, choosing and arranging in the minimum of words a heart cry for a world gone wrong. I make no claims for them other than that they seek to express the theological concentrate of a potent text.

Haiku Lamentations

Zion dismantled.

Military masterpiece,

City walls unbuilt.

...............................

Splintered gates, unhinged.

Doorways, empty sockets stare;

Shadows of despair.

..................................

Sorrow is constrained.

Grief controlled in bitter verse.

God, perhaps, has gone.

Comments

[Margaret Sutherland]

I remember getting my P4 class to write Haiku - they wrote some good stuff. Spoken and written words can be so powerful, we should use them wisely! By the way, I would never have called you a polysyllabic sesquipidalian show-off!