Spring Haiku (Rebel Girl)

“Prefer vegetable broth to duck soup.” – Basho’s advice to writers

Yes, spring has arrived and, like a drunken hummingbird to a swollen trumpet flower, Rebel Girl marks it by returning to the word, in this case, a few words. Haiku. The seventeen-syllable poem is rooted in the Japanese tradition of the close observation of nature--but in other elements as well. As the noted American poet and well-regarded translator Robert Hass points out, “If the first level of a haiku is its location in nature, its second is almost always some implicit Buddhist reflection on nature…At the core of Buddhist metaphysics are three ideas about natural things: that they are transient; that they are contingent; and that they suffer.” So, here for you, loyal Dissent readers, a spring bouquet of higher education haiku, full of nature, transience and suffering.

The long spring meeting Raghu says nothing so so many times A fishy smell the room where we sit for years waiting for nothing The spring we don't see the marked trees await their fate the ax, the death which arrives for all The chancellor! not interested in oak trees, teachers or students without classes The clock tower rots A-quad rabbits stare ahead still, waiting to run

Disclaimer: Most English majors will tell you that haiku are supposed to scan five syllables, seven syllables, then five again. Rebel Girl asks your indulgence and begs you to remember that in the original Japanese these would have worked--it’s the translation that renders them a bit off!