train tunnel --
the sudden intimacy
of mirrored faces
Best of Issue Haiku, Presence, #22, 2004
Beverley George
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
火車隧道 --
鏡照面孔之間突如其來
的親密關係
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
火车隧道 --
镜照面孔之间突如其来
的亲密关系
Bio Sketch
Beverley George is the past editor of Yellow Moon and the founder/editor of Eucalypt: a tanka journal 2006 - . In September 2009 she convened the 4th Haiku Pacific Rim Conference, in Terrigal, Australia. Beverley presented papers on haiku in Australia at the 3rd Haiku Pacific Rim conference in Matsuyama, Japan in 2007, and on Australian tanka at the 6th International Tanka Festival, Tokyo 2009. She was the president of the Australian Haiku Society 2006-2010.
Read in the context of train travel, the main cause of "the sudden intimacy/ of mirrored faces" could be a jolt of the train.
ReplyDeleteBeverley's masterful choice of "tunnel" (that could imply the connotations of "tunnel vision"), "intimacy," and "mirrored faces" (not physical bodies) challenges the reader to re-envision a new possibility of human encounters/interactions in urban life.
Her haiku jolts the memories of my train trips (pun intended)
Backstory from Beverley:
ReplyDelete"I still remember my own haiku when i go into a very long tunnel near our home and immediately the faces of strangers I have hardly noticed, loom large,reflected in the window glass. I often see small children, surprised by this too!"