My Life Rearranged

 How can we better understand what a haiku is, beyond its 17 syllables, if not through example?

I invite you to savor—perhaps with a cup of tea or coffee—a text from the volume “Survolând păpădiile” (“Flying Over the Dandelions”) by Corneliu Traian Atanasiu—an essential voice in the landscape of contemporary Romanian haiku. 

(Introduction by Ramona Bădescu)

My Life Rearranged

this beach of pebbles

after the wave

my life rearranged

— Gregory Piko (Australia)

I believe the emphasis falls on this—this beach of pebbles. The one I contemplate and evoke now. The one that reveals something unexpected and fascinating. The one I offer you too, as a reason for admiration and reflection.

Colloquial language knows how to say, elliptically and succinctly, only what needs to be said. It doesn't overload the text with details or descriptive adjectives. This is enough and, at the same time, extremely expressive—it calls you in, to see, to feel, and to understand the situation.

The text continues just as laconically and, in the end, slides—more than suggestively—away from what the wave actually does (moves the pebbles and leaves them in a new, different order) to a completely implausible effect: it (re)orders the author's life (and the reader's, if they too consent to the revelation).

Through this simple substitution—replacing the image of the constant shifting of pebbles moved by waves with that of a human life—what we see becomes a parable, and the text takes on the aesthetic value of a haiku.

The revelation, in human terms, is actually an acceptance born under the influence of an image that becomes a vision. There is no disorder—any change under the ceaseless assault of life’s waves is simply another unexpected and unparalleled order.

This wave is just the moment someone understood and made peace with their fate. The pebbles had known this all along. And had been telling it to him, again and again, in vain.

The poem tells us without insisting—it simply gives us something to think about. It draws our attention to the fact that this has already happened to someone.

(Comment by Corneliu Traian Atanasiu)