Haiku, Hinton & Chiao

As some of you know from my older posts, I lost my first son. He was born, lived six weeks, and died back in 1998. That said, I am forever looking for poems that take up the subject of loss, grief, especially re: children, for models for my own writing.

I have written about it finally, after many years. Mostly haiku, The brevity of the form, I believe, was about all I could sustain given the subject matter. (Thank you Issa.)

Here is a book (not haiku) that I really connected with, The Late Poems of Meng Chiao. It is translated by David Hinton (who’s body of work is beyond amazing), and below is an excerpt of my favorite poem from it: Apricots Died Young.

Apricots died young in blossoms still nipples. Frost cut them free, and their scattering made me mourn the child I had long ago, so I wrote this poem.

1
Don't fondle these pearls. O hands of ice,

fondle pearls and they're quick to fly.

And don't cut spring short, sudden frost.

Cut spring short and that blaze of beauty's lost.

Still nipples, tiny blossoms fall in tatters

tinged pure as a child's robes long ago.

I gather them, never filling my hands,

and at dusk, grief empty, return home.

3
It must be this same thread of tears

piercing the hearts of spring trees:

before blossoms opened anywhere,

flake after flake fell to the blade.

Spring's life never lasts, it's true,

but my lament over frost is already

impossibly deep. Instead of blossoms

bathing streams, tears bathe robes.

4
At our son's birth, the moon was dark,

and when he died, it began to shine.

Moon and child, they stole each other

away. O scarcely lived child of mine,

what's it like, blossom after blossom,

if not endless blue heavens in lament,

sweetness falling into earthen dust,

nothing left to bloom in other times?

8
Calamity infecting a child is natural:

blossoms mostly fail. Still, I gather

ruins of the heart, a spent old man

cradling love's debris in endless night.

What can be said once sound dies away?

And once hope's dead, song's useless.

Old and sick--no child, no grandchild,

I stand like bundled firewood, alone.