English Original
arms trade cash for heartbeats
Simon Hanson
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
軍火交易現金兌換心跳
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
军火交易现金兑换心跳
Bio Sketch
Simon Hanson lives in forested Tasmania in the company of animals and birds and the sounds of a trickling creek. Formerly Secretary to the Australian Haiku Society he is currently co-editor of Echidna Tracks. He has an e-book collection; Desert Stones (Snapshot Press) freely available here for you.
The opening phrase, "arms trade," sets the theme, and the thematically and emotionally effective, quick-pace one-line format accelerates the "cash [flow] for heartbeats."
ReplyDeleteOne simple yet sociopolitically important question remains: WHOSE HEARTBEATS
And the following haiku could be read as a sequel/counter-response to Simon's:
戦死者が青き数学より出たり
sennsisha ga aoki suugaku yori detari
war dead
exit out of a blue mathematics
Sumimura Seirinshi (杉村聖林子)
For more, see "New Rising Haiku: The Evolution of Modern Japanese Haiku and the Haiku Persecution Incident," Simply Haiku, 5:4, Winter 2007, accessed at http://www.simplyhaiku.com/SHv5n4/features/Ito.html
FYI: In his nationally televised address about the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine wars, President Biden described the American arms industry in Remarkably GlOWING TERMS, noting that, “just as in World War II, today patriotic American workers are building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom.” From a political and messaging perspective, the president cleverly focused on the workers involved in producing such weaponry rather than the giant corporations that profit from arming Israel, Ukraine, and other nations at war. But profit they do and, even more strikingly, much of the revenues that flow to those firms is pocketed as staggering executive salaries and stock buybacks that only boost shareholder earnings further...
--excerpted from Salon, Comentary, Nov. 15, 2023: "Good times for the military-industrial complex": American arms makers cashing in on conflict:But is it truly the arsenal of democracy?, accessed at https://www.salon.com/2023/11/15/good-times-for-the-military-industrial-complex-american-arms-makers-cashing-in-on-conflict_partner/
And And The Guardian, Nov. 15: "Messages arrive from Gaza with news of dead children. It has become a graveyard for humanity’s conscience" (FYI: The headline alludes to UN Secretary-General António Guterres's Nov. 6 remark:
The nightmare in Gaza is more than a humanitarian crisis. It is a crisis of humanity,...A graveyard for children)