Ice Flowers

Kigo Theme: WINTER FLOWERS

First Place -  28 Points

ice flowers...

the weight of words

I never said

Cezar Ciobika

(2,5,12) = 28 pts

**That last line really made me think...

          The contest Shiki Monthly Kukai is the oldest, most known and most frequently attended online kukai in the world. It is also the model we took after for our Romanian online kukai and it is no wonder that, as I remember, it has been won by the following participants in the RO KU group: Manuela Dragomirescu on May 2011, Eduard Țară in November 2013, Eduard Țară in February 2014, Lavana Kray in March 2014 and Cristina Oprea in May 2014.  

I believe that in English the poem has not only more expressive weight, but also more liveliness due to the verb in the first person. The version I would like to propose for Romanian is this: flori de gheață… / greutatea cuvintelor / nespuse vreodată. As you are reading the poem, you hesitate between accepting the tenderness of the ice flower and their being stone-cold, between tenderness and power (weight). The juxtaposition makes you gain an allegorical vision of the poem. The ice flowers are the result of avoiding difficult, heavy words in a conflictual situation, the equivalent of silence, of unspoken words.  However, in another situation, where you should confess your admiration, they can also be the words you would like to say but cannot say, as you know they would not live up to the expectations of what is to be said.

The ice flowers are an oxymoron. We find in them the grace and fragility of flowers but also the burden of the heavy ice. Last, but not least, there is the weight, that is, the value, of the unspoken words. The delicate and silent arabesque lying on the transparency between two human beings left speechless, overcome by emotions.

(Corneliu Traian Atansiu)