Book of the Week: From A Side Window/Vanuit Een Breed Venster

Marcel Smets was a Belgian teacher of Latin and Greek who developed an interest in haiku after studying Santoka. He went on to found and edit Volken en Water (Clouds and Water), a mini-journal on haiku and Eastern culture, and later published several collections of his own haiku. In 1995, he founded Harundine, a Flemish association of Latin poets, and in 1999 he edited a collection of 92 of their haiku, in Latin and English, titled This Night They All Danced. In 1999 he authored today’s Book of the Week, From a Side Window (Vanuit een Breed Venster), a dual-language (Dutch and English) mini-book of 19 haiku about a short stay in a Brussels hospital, published by Radish Books.

from a wide window
I can see three birds, high
in their morning flight

the wood’s edge,
that dark life of the trees,
touches the hospital

together
we look at the full moon,
a branch in its eye

You can read the entire book in the THF Digital Library.

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Haiku featured in the Book of the Week Archive are selected by THF Digital Librarian Garry Eaton, and are used with permission.