SEARCHING MY FIRST HAIKU

A couple of days ago, Pune-poet Kala Ramesh contacted me to know when I wrote and published my first haiku. While browsing my diaries to find the haiku, I discovered several poems composed decades ago without knowing that these could be haiku.

Though 3-liners as stanzas of my regular poems have been written since the early 1970s, and many of them have the standard haiku structure, I have published most of my early independent haiku in the trilogy collections EVERY STONE DROP PEBBLE (Catherine Mair, Patricia Prime and R K Singh. New Delhi: Bahri Publications, 1999) and PACEM IN TERRIS (Myriam Pierri, GiovanniCampisi and R KSingh. 'Peddling Dream,' English/Italian, Trento:Edizioni Universum, 2003).

Haiku also appear in my early poetry collections, Memories Unmemoried (1988), Music Must Sound (1990), and Flight of Phoenix (1990). Now, out of print, the poems of these books are included in MY SILENCE AND OTHER SELECTED POEMS: 1974-1994 (Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot,1996) and SENSE AND SILENCE: COLLECTED POEMS (Jaipur: Yking Books, 2010).

Now, the first haiku: I can safely say, the first independent haiku poem was composed in January 1973, though I'm afraid I could not publish it anywhere. I can’t trace if it was published:

Reconciling

inner jerks in the train

running homeward

(Composed on January 8, 1973)

The other haiku, then included in my book, MUSIC MUST SOUND (1990), were composed on July 2, 1982:

Scooped in the belly

of a huge airbus

it's only sunset

and

The night died

for nobody trimmed

the wick of lamp

(Composed on Feb 16, 1982).

However, the haiku I would like to be considered as a good first haiku is this:

A stray sperm

grows in the ovum

blooms as puffball

(Composed on Feb.3, 1985.

First published in Poetry Time, Vol.XI, No.2, Summer 1986; and also included in PEDDLING DREAM, 2003)

But I wonder how I could leave certain haiku unpublished in any of my poetry collections. Lest these are lost in the dust of time, I would like to share my first haiku (written in 1973) with poets/researchers interested in Haiku in English from India:

Reconciling

inner jerks in the train

running homeward

[Composed on Jan.8, 1973]

Politicians

come with gold

no better than prostitutes

[Composed on Feb.27, 1973]

Alone in this room

when I need love

I'm offered cigarette

[Composed on Nov.5, 1973]

Even some later haiku have remained unpublished because they lack, as I thought then, the 5-7-5 structure?

Meeting at night

she chuckles and looks

a witch

[Composed on Dec.13 1975]

Downpour is relieving

after sultry days-

wipes ulcerous taints

[Composed on April 6, 1982]

--R K SINGH

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