[a single bloom]

a golden shovel with Tōtō

Asked to write a cloudless poem, a
risqué haiku for a friend who is single
I begin with one bloom
—not because she is forlorn in
the dive she frequents–no, the
flower is a window.
I want her to realize the of
whenever she hears peonies.

(Note: translation by Hiroaki Sato with permission to use.)

A Golden Shovel with Uejima Onitsura beginning with the headnote:
             Monk Kudo asked me, ‘What’s your haikai eye like?’ I responded impromptu:

The neighboring park offers in–
digenous plants, more marsh than the
past bulbs-in-a-row garden
where blooming
was timed according to, say, white
and red and yellow. Are
we as deserving as wild camellias?

(Note: translation by Hiroaki Sato with permission to use.)

[Is the rain] ii.
a golden shovel with Kōzan

Downpour, drizzle, spitting–is
any one word true for the
kind of beating in this rain,
the one I find myself in–without my
slicker or umbrella, without the old
eaves of my father and mother’s
where a racoon at the screen now tears?

(Note: translation by Kimiko Hahn)

Kimiko Hahn is the author of eleven collections, most recently The Ghost Forest: New and Selected poems. Her subjects range from identity to current events to science. In the new work, she continues to play with Eastern, Western and hybrid forms–and she invents new forms that pay homage to past writers. Among her honors is the 2023 Ruth Lilly Prize for Lifetime Achievement from The Poetry Foundation and she is a Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets. Hahn teaches in the MFA Program for Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, City University of New York.