Translated into Romanian by Dan DOMAN
frozen trough
I cup the warm breath
of my horse
First Prize
The Seventh Haiku Contest
Sharpening the Green Pencil, 2018
Comments by Cezar Florin CIOBICA (translation by Ana DROBOT):
The winning poem drew me towards it due to the delicacy of the picture presented, through the close connection between man and animal. The horse and its master have set together on the road, and they stop for a moment to rest and drink water, but, because of the low temperatures the trough is frozen, so the animal cannot drink. The master, however, probably numb with cold, gets warmed somehow by catching the breath of the faithful animal in the palm of his hands.
The two parts of the poem harmoniously weave around the complementarity death-life (standing still versus animation) in a wintery landscape whose glacial stiffness the reader can feel through his skin, due, partly, to the alliteration of the consonant "r" which appears five times in the poem. It can be speculated that the man, being too old and tired, or even ill, is reanimated, and, why not, put back on his feet by the warm, miraculous breath of his horse.
And, what is even more beautiful, is the fact that this poem, through his props, has taken me back in time, making me see no one else but Basho himself nearby the trough, sliding down his narrow path towards the far north.
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