English Original
Chuck Brickley
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
乾涸的河床
一顆子彈殼的閃光
是唯一的聲音
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
干涸的河床
一颗子弹壳的闪光
是唯一的声音
Bio Sketch
A native San Franciscan, Chuck Brickley lived in rural British Columbia for 35 years. His book of haiku, earthshine, won the THF Touchstone Award for Distinguished Books 2017; the HSA Merit Book Award 2017, Honorable Mention; and the inaugural Marianne Bluger Book Award 2020, Honourable Mention. His haibun,“Is Where The Car Is," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize 2018, and another haibun, "A Banishing," received a Sonders Best Small Fiction Award nomination, 2019
L1 sets the scene and mood while the use of synesthesia in Ls 2&3 reveals a history of violence, where synecdoche is employed to show its "loud and bright" voice, against Mother Earth as symbolized by L1.
ReplyDeleteWhat's left unsaid, such as the cause(s) of this "dry" creekbed, why is there a bullet left at the bottom of a highly unlikely place, a creek..., is far more potent than what's stated in this "nature/creek" haiku.
This haiku reminds me of the following remark:
In a war situation or where violence and injustice are prevalent, "poetry is called upon to be something more than a thing of beauty."
-- Seamus Heaney, Ireland's most renowned poet since Yeats, playwright and translator who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature,
And the following haiku could be read as its prequel:
snowmelt
the border mountain drips
bullet by bullet
Frogpond, 47:2, Spring/Summer 2024
Srinivasa Rao Sambangi