For those of you who did not know, yet: the Japan Fans Utrecht also organise a haiku group! This autumn, we asked some friends via our Japan Fans Mastodon group to write and send us their favourite haiku about the fall season. Please enjoy these three autumnal haiku.
The first two autumnal haiku are by Mastodon user @ruben. You can read them separately, but they also form a nice diptych together.
Through the rain, head bowed
@Ruben
The reflective puddles grow
One can’t but look up
Icy, dry wind blows
@Ruben
Though lonely trees stand naked,
fallen leaves whisper
The third haiku was written by Marc, with the help of Artificial Intelligence:
Golden leaves fall
Quietly to the ground below
Nature’s symphony(Translated from Japanese)
Assistant (AI)
As a bonus, Martine wrote a small poem – not quite a haiku – about the Ainu language, to support her ongoing research (more on this later).
そらへ いのちのまどろむ まち
Sora e inochi no madoromu machi
In the city, where life sleeps
Martine
To the sky, I look up
In English, this phrase would translate to something like “The city where life sleeps to the sky.” The individual words are as follows:
- そら (sora) – sky
- へ (e) – to (indicates direction)
- いのち (inochi) – life
- の (no) – possessive particle
- まどろむ (madoromu) – to sleep
- まち (machi) – city
The Japan Fans are a group of friends who organise fun on- and offline activities around their common interests in Japanese culture. One of the activities is the Japan Fans Haiku Group in Utrecht, which meets irregularly in Buurthuis Rosa. We aim to have our own Japanese Cultural Centre, where we could fascilitate meetings of our Utrecht haiku group in style.
