English Original
vacant house ...
light snow shrouds
the eaves
Theresa A. Cancro
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
空屋 ...
薄雪覆蓋
屋簷
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
空屋 ...
薄雪覆盖
屋檐
Bio Sketch
Theresa A. Cancro has been writing modern English-language haiku, senryu, tanka, haibun, and tanka prose since 2012. Dozens of her poems have been published in print and online journals as well as numerous anthologies. Theresa is currently a THF board member and Second Vice President of the Tanka Society of America. She resides in Wilmington, Delaware.
Spare, evocative miniature!
ReplyDeleteThis haiku effectively employs what William J. Higginson terms the “zoom-lens effect” ("The Haiku Handbook," p. 116). The visual focus shifts from the “vacant house” (L1) to the “eaves” (L3), the roof’s edge and a "liminal zone between interior and exterior."
By highlighting the eaves, the haiku not only marks the boundary between the house’s interior life—or its absence (as suggested from L1) —and the snowy world outside (L2), but also evokes the sense of stillness, quiet vigilance, and the passage of time.
The eaves, lightly shrouded in snow, stand as a silent witness to vacancy, transforming a simple architectural detail into a meditation on absence and the threshold between shelter and exposure.