frozen trough
I cup the warm breath
of my horse
First Place, 2018 Sharpening the Green Pencil Haiku Contest
Debbie Strange
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
凍結的食物槽
我用雙手承接來自我的馬
溫暖的氣息
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
冻结的食物槽
我用双手承接来自我的马
温暖的气息
Bio Sketch
Debbie Strange is an award-winning Canadian short form poet, haiga artist, and photographer. Keibooks released her second full-length poetry collection, Three-Part Harmony: Tanka Verses in 2018, and Folded Word published her haiku chapbook, A Year Unfolding in 2017. An archive of publications may be accessed at http://debbiemstrange.blogspot.com/
... The winning poem drew me towards it due to the delicacy of the picture presented, through the close connection between man and animal. The horse and its master have set together on the road, and they stop for a moment to rest and drink water, but, because of the low temperatures the trough is frozen, so the animal cannot drink. The master, however, probably numb with cold, gets warmed somehow by catching the breath of the faithful animal in the palm of his hands.
ReplyDeleteThe two parts of the poem harmoniously weave around the complementarity death-life (standing still versus animation) in a wintery landscape whose glacial stiffness the reader can feel through his skin, due, partly, to the alliteration of the consonant "r" which appears five times in the poem. It can be speculated that the man, being too old and tired, or even ill, is reanimated, and, why not, put back on his feet by the warm, miraculous breath of his horse.
And, what is even more beautiful, is the fact that this poem, through his props, has taken me back in time, making me see no one else but Basho himself nearby the trough, sliding down his narrow path towards the far north....
Comments by Cezar Florin CIOBICA (translation by Ana DROBOT), accessed at https://sharpeningthegreenpencil.blogspot.com/p/2018.html