We move silently In the cold rain Carrying the white boxes in front

Will the town Throw a festival For those brought back as bones

 

Santoka Taneda, last of the wandering beggar-monks, wrote these haiku in 1937 protesting against the savage Sino-Japanese war (1). He was risking his life. He would have known of the fate of Uchiyama Gudo, executed in 1911, and the first of a number of exceptional Buddhist priests who steadfastly opposed Japanese military imperialism. The atrocious civil war in former Yugoslavia has also produced many notable haiku whose wry, ironic realism exposes ideological waffle and mindless confrontation. These are from the Croat poet Mirko Vidovic (2):-

 

kalashnikovs stop short the tapping of the woodpecker

hush, for the tramp of cicadas across the drum

 

Nearer home there is the suffering, compassion and occasional violence of institutional caring, as in these two examples from Seán O’Connor and Honour Thomasin Stedman respectively (3):-

 

He attacks me my raised arms blocking punches our eyes connect
	above this floor screams and bangs from the locked ward how near we all are

 

Beyond romanticism and fanaticism, public haiku may have a dry, sympathetic humour about them. My senryu below offer ironic perspectives on the conflicts of language and identity in my own country ("Cymru Rhydd - Free Wales"). If you have a flag pole, you can fly the red dragon or the union flag - or both. And, linguistically, public notices give plenty of opportunity for making a point. Thus, the farmer’s wife (below) rates the Language of Heaven higher - literally - than the language of commerce:-

 

Battered bus shelter in runny letters "CYMRU RHYDD!"	"WYAU AR WERTH"; obscured by weeds:- "Eggs for sale"
So calm a day – whose flag hangs from the pole?	Concealed by summer greenery bilingual place names

 

Today the ancient haiku ideal of being at one with nature takes on a new and more urgent significance. "Perhaps we can learn to think like a cricket, a rainforest, a river or a coral reef," writes Patricia Donegan. "This is the heart of deep ecology. The practice of writing haiku is a way of thinking and being in nature - a deep way to practice deep ecology" (4). She quotes Seishi Yamaguchi:-

 

Unless totally blinded by willow pattern whimsy, it is now difficult to walk in the countryside without being aware of the many ecological paradoxes and follies encountered. Here are two from a walk across uplands grotesquely (and unsustainably) transformed by heavily subsidised overstocking, fertilising and dosing. And, at the same time, nature’s readily available renewable energy is ignored:-

 

Livid green and sheep dip stench the ancient pastures

Beside the roaring torrent chattering in its little hut his diesel generator

 

We now live in an age in which we separate public and personal awareness - and healing - at our peril. Contemporary haiku writing is beginning to reflect this. This broadening of sensibility can only be welcomed. There are, as always, accompanying pitfalls. For instance, may we be preserved from haiku that are written because they are politically correct.

Finally, what of the life of an activist, with its conflicts and ironies?

 

"Green Activist" standing upright in the waste bin

Out of the brightly lit house off to the brightly lit meeting the moon at the gate

 

by Ken Jones