Sunday, December 7, 2025

Butterfly Dream: Dash and Dot Haiku by George Swede

English Original

paper-white winter sky
the crow becomes a dash
then a dot 

Frozen Breaths, 1983

George Swede


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

冬日雪白的天空
烏鴉演變成標點符號破折號
然後一個點

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

冬日雪白的天空
乌鸦演变成标点符号破折号
然后一个点


Bio Sketch

George Swede's most recent collections of haiku are Almost Unseen (Decatur, IL: Brooks Books, 2000)Joy In Me Still (Edmonton: Inkling Press, 2010) and micro haiku: three to nine syllables (Inspress, 2014). He is a former editor of Frogpond: Journal of the Haiku Society of America (2008-2012) and a former Honorary Curator of the American Haiku Archives (2008-2009).

1 comment:

  1. L1, “paper-white winter sky,” immediately sets a clean, blank sheet while the movement in Ls 2&3, the crow shifting from dash → dot, gives the haiku a sense of distance, time, and vanishing.

    A fresh and poetic imaginative haiku about a crow's "wordless skywriting !"

    ReplyDelete