Saturday, July 29, 2017

Butterfly Dream: Graveyard Shift Haiku by Elmedin Kadric

English Original

graveyard shift
the leftover radish
tumbles in the lunch box

Editors' Choice, The Heron's Nest, 17:3, September 2015

Elmedin Kadric


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

墓地輪班工作
吃剩下的蘿蔔
在午餐盒裡翻滾

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

墓地轮班工作
吃剩下的萝蔔
在午餐盒里翻滚


Bio Sketch

Elmedin Kadric was born in Novi Pazar, Serbia, but writes out of Helsingborg, Sweden. A student of both longer and shorter forms of poetry, and an avid observer of everything else.

1 comment:

  1. A sense of yugen ("depth and mystery") is effectively conveyed through the visually and psychologically resonant juxtaposition of two seemingly unrelated events.

    Note: "... The compound “yūgen” 幽玄 (lit., depth and mystery) is made of two Chinese characters: “Yū” means “faint, dim,” and also “deep;” “gen” indicates the black color, the color of heaven, something far away, something quiet, and an occult principle. We find the character “gen” used in the Tao Te Ching (Classic of the Way and Integrity) to describe the “Way:"

    These two -- the nameless and what is named -- emerge from the same source yet are referred to differently. Together they are called obscure (Chinese, xuan; Japanese, gen), the obscurest of the obscure, they are the swinging gateway of the manifold mysteries.1

    Thus, “yūgen” is something well beyond the reach of man’s immediate perception and understanding, since it is too deep and too far for humans to reach, even conceptually. In ancient China, yūgen came to indicate the other world, as well as the Taoist Way and Buddhist enlightenment.2 -- Yūgen by Michael F. Marra ...

    -- excerpted from my "Poetic Musings" post, Ezra Pound’s "Metro Poem" as a Yugen Haiku, which can be accessed at http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.ca/2013/04/poetic-musings-ezra-pounds-metro-poem.html

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