English Original
tents go dark
in the refugee camp
winter moon
Autumn Moon Haiku Journal, 9:1, 2025/26
Neha Singh Soni
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
難民營的帳篷
一片漆黑
冬月
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
难民营的帐篷
一片漆黑
冬月
Bio Sketch
Neha Singh Soni is a chartered accountant from India with a deep love for poetry especially haiku. Her poetry has been published in many international journals. Through her poems Neha aims to celebrate life's simple moments and connect with the readers on a profound level.
This haiku effectively employs what William J. Higginson terms the “zoom-lens effect” ("The Haiku Handbook,," p. 116). Its visual focus shifts from the immediate ground-level scene of the refugee camp—where the tents go dark in Ls 1&2—to a distant, celestial wide shot in L3: the winter moon. This shift creates a natural cutting point that resists explicit commentary and instead invites the reader to supply the emotional resonance of the scene.
ReplyDeleteThe final image, “winter moon,” also functions as a kigo, grounding the poem in a specific season and emotional climate. Winter conventionally carries connotations of cold, scarcity, and desolation, which subtly intensify the human vulnerability implied by the darkened tents below. The impassive moon, suspended above the camp, heightens the contrast between cosmic permanence and fragile human circumstance, allowing the haiku’s emotional weight to emerge through juxtaposition rather than statement.