Bonding Borders & Boundaries: Afriku and Changing Seasons on the Continent
Bonding Borders & Boundaries: Afriku and Changing Seasons on the Continent
by Jerome Bergland
The haiku is a migratory creature. While practiced by the wittiest and most learned of different eclectic generations, it is not content to be stifled in the halls of the small elite or the chambers of royals (the way waka was relegated for many years to a privileged and titled few of the august, imperial courts). The haiku’s most renowned practitioners over the eons, from Bashō to Issa, have characteristically been wanderers, wayfaring across great swathes of land with begging bowls and walking sticks—like Mongolian nomads, but no less so akin to (and relatable to) the European wandering gypsy, the medieval Jewish peddler, or the American hobo: itinerant laborers of the Dust Bowl era that modern readers associate with Steinbeck and his Grapes of Wrath.
These wanderers most frequently (through heady environmental allegory) told of the universal and existential struggles every human can relate to, against the elements’ onslaught, the insidious stranglehold of poverty, the body’s fragility, and wildlife’s harrying. Yet the haijin manages to discern great beauty from this transience and plight, almost contrarily, and stubbornly has derived and celebrated the yang hiding within the great yins we experience, often quite viciously, and vice versa. Hence, naturally, being so egalitarian and concerned with capturing and depicting nature and its wonders, near and far, haiku has proven to be a potent and well-suited medium for poets worldwide to productively mine their unique landscapes and experiences for precious deposits. .
