Recently I have begun to write Haiku, a form of Japanese poetry. I have a passion for words – their meanings and sounds, the capacity of words to convey human thought, express human emotion, announce personal intention. In the beginning was the Word – a creative purposeful power that calls into being, that names what is created because it is personal and relational, that creates the reality of goodness by pronouncing what is made – good.
Haiku is a disciplined shaping of words to express truth with purity and singleness of thought. In its classical form it has three lines of 5 then 7, then 5 syllables. Not much scope for polysyllabic sesquipidalian show-offs then! But a well conceived and constructed Haiku verse can contain depth of emotion, clarity of insight, intensity of thought – so I find it an interesting way of trying to contain – not in the sense of constrain, but in the sense of hold, the meaning of biblical text.
A recent example of this for me was Advent, when I spent some time exploring the book of Lamentations in the company of two women commentators – their books are on the sidebar. It seemed important to hear the voices of those acquainted with grief, and with God, in a time when we too hear the lamentations of dispossessed, violated people. I offer only three of what for me became an exercise in reverent articulation, patient verbal renunciation, choosing and arranging in the minimum of words a heart cry for a world gone wrong. I make no claims for them other than that they seek to express the theological concentrate of a potent text.
Haiku Lamentations
Zion dismantled.
Military masterpiece,
City walls unbuilt.
………………………….
Splintered gates, unhinged.
Doorways, empty sockets stare;
Shadows of despair.
…………………………….
Sorrow is constrained.
Grief controlled in bitter verse.
God, perhaps, has gone.