Monday, June 22, 2015

Butterfly Dream: Liquid Twilight Haiku by Kala Ramesh

English Original

liquid twilight
the tilt of a water pot
on her hip

Frogpond, 31:3, Autumn 2008

Kala Ramesh


Chinese Translation (Traditional)


水樣般黎明
在她臀部上
晃動的水鍋

Chinese Translation (Simplified)


水样般黎明
在她臀部上
晃动的水锅 


Bio Sketch

Kala Ramesh has published more than one thousand poems comprising haiku, tanka, haibun, & renku in reputed journals and anthologies in Japan, Europe, UK, Australia, USA and India. Her work can be read in two prestigious publications: Haiku 21: an anthology of contemporary English-language Haiku (Modern Haiku Press, 2012) and Haiku in English - the First Hundred Years (W.W. Norton 2013). She enjoys teaching haiku and allied genres at the Symbiosis International University, Pune.

2 comments:

  1. The opening word, "liquid," not only helps to establish the scenic context of the poem, but also provides a "scent link" (in Basho's sense of the phrase) to L2. And the vivid image portrayed in Ls 2&3 enhances the sensually suggestive power of the poem. It reminds me of the iconic image in Tagore's famous story about the Festival of Bathing: ('The New Queen's Heart's Desire,' "The Prince and Other Modern Fables"):

    After finishing her bath and on the way back to the palace, the new queen peeped out of the palanquin and saw the old queen, who wore a red-bordered coarse white sari and white conch-shell bangles, carrying a pot of water on her hip as she walked back home from her bath, and the rays of the morning sun glinted off her moist hair and the wet water pot.

    Note: Later when the king come home, he asked the new queen, "what ails you -- what does your heart desire?" the queen said, "My heart desires to have a bath in the river every morning and to walk back on the forest trail with a water pot on my hip."

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