English Original
alone now
no ruby slippers
to take me home
plum afternoon, 2017
Kristen Deming
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
現在孤單一人
沒有紅寶石拖鞋
帶我回家
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
现在孤单一人
没有红宝石拖鞋
带我回家
Bio Sketch
Kristen Deming was an accomplished haiku poet and lover of literature. Her haiku collection, Plum Afternoon was a finalist in the Haiku Society of America's Merit Book Award in 2017. As a past president of the Haiku Society of America and active member in the haiku community in Japan for many years, one of Kristen's enduring contributions to the haiku communities around the world was a weekly poetry column in the Japan Times called "Haiku Moments" that she co-wrote with a Japanese colleague for six years, helping to open the world of haiku to English speakers and to give glimpses of Japanese culture through the lens of haiku.
This haiku has a strong, simple emotional arc.
ReplyDeleteThe word “now” in L 1 does a great deal of work. It implies a before without explaining what happened, so the speaker’s loneliness feels like the aftermath of something—a departure, a loss, or a separation. The poem gives us just enough context to feel that absence without defining it.
In L 2, “ruby slippers” is an effective cultural shorthand. The reader immediately supplies Dorothy, Oz, and the possibility of returning home. Yet the poem doesn’t lean too heavily on the reference. Instead, L 3 turns the familiar image into something unexpectedly sad: the speaker has no magical means of getting home.
I especially like “to take me home.” It could have been “to bring me home,” but “take” is more evocative. It preserves the slippers’ magical agency: they are not merely something the speaker wears, but the means by which the speaker might be carried away from where they are. Their absence therefore makes the loneliness in L 1 feel more profound. The poem takes an instantly recognizable image of escape and transforms it into an image of helplessness and longing.