Four Semi-Haiku About the Fall
Autumn Reflections is another experiment. After the analytical approach of Terra Dystopia, I wanted to try a few short fictional pieces in which an image might carry the thought.
Disclaimer: These texts are fictional creations. While they may reflect real-world themes, any resemblance to persons, apples or wasps—living or gone—is purely coincidental.
I am not a poet, but good haiku always captivate me, and it is tempting to try something of that concentration myself [1]. Until now, I have mostly approached it through images.
We have often talked about xieyi painting [2], and its attempt to capture a subject’s spirit or essence. I find a related concentration in haiku, though the two are distinct traditions. Here I tried to give a few images meaning in words and then in calligraphy. It also became clear how much my hand had missed regular practice that year. The Painted Haiku portfolio follows another approach to this meeting of poems and images.
Four Semi-Haiku
The first three semi-haiku came after a restless night. I kept their original form to preserve that spontaneity. The fourth developed over several revisions. I use “koan” loosely in the headings, as an invitation to pause over an image, rather than to claim these are traditional Zen kōans. The original brushwork is mine; the framing and backgrounds are composed digitally, and the printed text in the script comparison uses a computer font.
Koan 1: The Apple
Old and wrinkled,
it rests in the orange late-summer sun.
Only wasps delight in the sweetness of its decay. [3]
苹果
老旧起皱, 躺在橘色的晚夏阳光里, 只有黄蜂, 陶醉于腐烂的甜味
Koan 2: The Poker Player
So many marked cards pulled from his sleeve.
Now the cloth is threadbare, and the cards are plain to see.
No one wants to play with him anymore.
牌手
袖中藏着无数做过记号的牌，
如今袖布已磨损，牌面一目了然，
无人再与他同桌。
Cursive or “grass” handwriting (草书) on the left; computer-typeset standard characters (楷书) on the right. The comparison image preserves the wording of the draft.
Koan 3: The Old King
The children flee from him, shunning his bitter smell.
Only the court jesters remain, praising his new clothes.
老国王
孩童们逃离他, 惧怕他腐败的气味, 只剩下那些弄臣, 赞美他的新衣
Koan 4: Shine and Ashes
This last poem was harder and came two days later. I first tried to put too many ideas into it; I had to reduce, aiming to be both more abstract and more concrete.
Shine and Ashes
Gray paint hides his face,
orange dreams fade into ash—
laughter turns to stone.
光辉与灰烬 (橙梦之尘)
灰颜遮面， 橙梦化灰烬，笑声成顽石。
An earlier version of this poem looked like this (and hints at a mirror in the image):
He sits at the mirror,
not painting a smile
but wiping away the white
of every laugh he once owned.
I began with “Death of a Clown” in mind—the song sung by Dave Davies of the Kinks. From there came the image of a clown alone, removing his make-up one last time and thinking about his career.
And here is the same work in two deliberately extravagant digital frames. The choice of frame can add a joke of its own:
About My Calligraphy Examples
Writing good calligraphy takes time. It’s exactly like a pianist learning a new piece; you only get to creativity and artistic expression after a lot of practice.
So what I’m showing here are just the first steps. But they served their purpose for this article, and I probably won’t continue working on them. If I had the time to perfect all four, autumn might be over before I finished, or the theme would have changed its meaning. 🙂
In The Abundance of Modesty, we looked at early Chinese writing on oracle bones, jiǎgǔwén (甲骨文). Here I use freer, cursive forms. Cǎoshū (草书), often called grass script, developed around the end of the Han dynasty; it is not the newest script. Reading its abbreviated and connected forms requires study, including for fluent readers of standard Chinese. The Smithsonian’s introduction to cursive script explains that history.
The Chinese texts are adaptations accompanying the English poems. The title 光辉与灰烬 corresponds to “Shine and Ashes”; 橙梦之尘, roughly “the dust of orange dreams,” is an alternative image rather than a literal translation. I was looking for wording that could work with the brush as well as on the page.
Footnotes
[1] Traditional Japanese haiku commonly use a 5–7–5 pattern of on, sound units often described as morae, which do not correspond exactly to English syllables. Seasonal reference (kigo) and a cut or juxtaposition are important features. English-language haiku vary in form; I call these longer, freely shaped pieces “semi-haiku.” See the Poetry Foundation’s introduction.
[2] → Xieyi (literally “writing ideas”) is a freehand style of Chinese painting that aims to capture the spirit or essence of a subject, rather than focusing on a literal or realistic depiction. It prioritizes emotional expression over perfect representation.
[3] Wasps’ interest in sweet food is particularly noticeable in late summer; see UCL’s account of seasonal food preferences. The poem turns that observation into an image of decay, without making a claim about intoxication.
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Painted Haiku: Visual Poetry · Superior Haiku by Ashley · Dao and Zen Again: Applying Eastern Philosophy to Contemporary Ink Painting
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