re:Virals 520

Welcome to re:Virals, The Haiku Foundation’s weekly commentary feature on some of your favorites among the best contemporary haiku and senryu written in English. In the host chair today is Susan Yavaniski. This week’s poem, chosen by Joseph Chiang was:

   
wishing
for grandkids
the silence of stars
— Ann Sullivan
  Prune Juice Issue 46, August 2025

Introducing this poem, Joseph writes:

In an age of increasingly aging societies across the world, and a plethora of constraining factors for young people these days to have children, there seems to be less and less for and of the next generation. Despite the very real backdrop of social, relational, and economical issues, Ann emulates the grandkid in her poem, beautifully so, so that we might contemplate this “silence” and what it means for each of us. I look forward to reading what others relate to or not from this verse.

Host comment (Susan Yavaniski):

While many similar words might have served the poet for her opening line, such as hoping, praying, longing, or yearning, by conjoining the verb wishing with stars,  the poem introduces a vertical axis that links this poem to its larger cultural context. (For more on the vertical axis, see the footnote 1 at the end of the post.)

I suspect I am not the only reader who associates the verse with the ubiquitous Disney theme song, “When You Wish Upon a Star.” (Indeed, reading the poem immediately infected me with an earworm, the tune looping in my brain all week.) The lyrics fabulate the notion that wishing upon a star will bring fulfillment of any heart’s desire. The song is from the 1940 Disney film “Pinocchio,” about an elderly woodcarver who—similar to the protagonist in Sullivan’s poem—longs for a child, makes a wish upon a star, and wakes in the morning to discover that a Blue Fairy has transformed a puppet he’d carved into a boy. Many Americans will be familiar with both the tune and the film’s story, and so the connection would come readily when reading this poem.

Significantly, the song entered pop culture at the outset of WWII, when Hollywood was flooding Americans with positive messaging, and seems to embody the kind of relentless positivity and hopefulness that has long been, until recently perhaps, a hallmark of American culture.  Possibly the songwriters were inspired by the popular American nursery rhyme from an earlier era, Star Light, Star Bright, which many Americans learn by heart as children, or just took inspiration from the millennia-old habit in every culture of looking to the heavens, and to its resident gods and deities, for signs and portents and blessings.

As the commentaries demonstrate, Sullivan’s restrained eight-word verse allows space for a constellation of interpretations and emotions no matter where in the world the reader is from, but American that I am, I can’t help but read the poem thinking of its relationship to the culture from which it came. This vertical axis adds a note of complexity to the both feeling of hope and to the poignant sense of sadness and of existential loneliness contained in this poem. For me, the allusion gives the verse a darkly ironic undercurrent. The protagonist is face-to-face with not only a remote pantheon of stars with their attendant gods and fates, but also with the inevitable disappointment created by the American “culture of hope” itself, which offers promises so lofty that let-down is inevitable.  No Blue Fairy can fix the myriad environmental, social, cultural and economic factors which, as Joseph Chiang mentions in his introductory comment, contribute to the decline in fertility rates, which are decreasing most rapidly in the United States, and which is the source of much personal distress for those of childbearing age as well as for the generation old enough to yearn for grandchildren.

The stars’ silence can be understood as the protagonist’s own heart’s desire, their hope for their grandchildren, as in “I wish that the stars may be silent as they now are, so that my grandchildren might enjoy them.”   A reader might also interpret the stars’ silence as the ultimate solace: Absent a house full of children’s laughter, the seemingly eternal silence of space offers a haven of peace. Yet the night sky is not eternal, but is already changing, “louder” with satellites both military and commercial (most from the US),  the exosphere already filled with visible space junk.  The numbers of such satellites are projected to increase astronomically in the next few years. The night sky is no more inviolable or eternal than the waters or the air. It now seems inevitable that national or corporate interests will use the “heavens” for war, or for messaging and advertising, creating displays in the stratosphere that further detract from the constellations. (See footnote 2) Even a so-called dark sky sanctuary will be unable to offer the same consolation of wonder and silence and peace, however much we might all wish it to be so.

Sudha Devi Nayak:

In a multipolar, volatile world ridden with strife and conflict, the grandmother wishes for her grandkids the silence of the stars. The last line of this haiku so complete in itself spells serenity, calm of mind, a contentment and in the Biblical sense “a peace that passeth all understanding”. When we look at the spangled sky glowing with twinkling starlight, we are aware of a feeling of awe and reverence for the universe. The stars in their inscrutable spheres above the cacophony of the world are the silent spectators looking down on the struggling humanity with the turmoil of their emotions, their resolution through war and aggression fraught with disastrous consequence. They seem to be breathing down an air of peace and quietude on the strife and struggle, turbulence and travail. The grandmother, world-weary as she must be with all her experience in a world of elusive charms and promises, has no greater ambitions for her grandchildren than the immaculate peace of the stars. In the peace they find in themselves and around them lies joy and aspiration, and in the divinity of that peace they will go on to realize their desires. She breathes a blessing and in that blessing lies peace and the wisdom of the stars, the holiness that looks at the flux of life with equanimity and a twinkle.

Jonathan Epstein:

“wishing/ for grandkids”’ is common these days. More and more dual-income couples are postponing parenthood. As a result, seniors easily yearn for a grandchild as a well of imagined familial happiness. But the universe, in this verse, has not granted the desired wish. Line 3, “the silence of stars” strongly echoes the symbolic silence (kireji) preceding it and tells us that in response to the affairs of human creatures, “stars” (heavenly bodies including stars, planets, moons asteroids, galaxies) remain characteristically uninvolved. Unlike “the silence of stars,” the star-wisher in this verse — May her wish come true — belongs to a species that has the unique ability to wish (or pray) for what she imagines will bring her happiness. Is the one “wishing for grandkids” unhappy at “the silence of stars”? Not at all. She takes in the wonder of the starry night, wishes on a star and listens, becoming one with the moment.

Dan Campbell:

Ana-Maria Hernandez Gonzalez Valencia de Ayala’s Bilingual Lullaby Response to a Poem

Verse 1 (English)
Hush now, my heart, don’t cry in the night,
I’m wishing for grandkids, for voices so bright.
But the silence of stars is the song that I hear,
They rock me so gently, they whisper me near.

Verse 2 (Español)
Duerme, mi corazón, no llores, mi bien,
Deseo a mis nietos, sus risas también.
Pero el silencio de estrellas es lo que oí,
Me arrullan despacio, me acercan a mí.

Verse 3 (English)
Sleep now, my longing, I’ll hold you so tight,
Though no little footsteps come running tonight.
The silence of stars is a cradle above,
And wishing itself is a lullaby of love.

Verse 4 (Español)
Duerme, mi corazon, te abrazo sin fin,
No llegan pasitos corriendo hasta aquí.
El silencio de estrellas me cubre de amor,
Y desear es mi cuna, canción del dolor.

Urszula Marciniak:

Stars fall silently as Grandma makes her wishes. Or perhaps Grandma wishes her grandchildren a peaceful sky? Or perhaps Grandma promises that one day she will watch over her grandchildren from above, among the stars. Grandma’s immense love (without using the word love) emanates from the haiku, greater than all the power of the universe with its countless stars. And she knows her grandchildren love her too, though they will likely never be able to express it as she does. Let us visit our grandmothers today, and if we can no longer visit them, let us gaze at the stars with a silent prayer.

Alan Harvey:

This haiku could be called a Grandparent’s Lament or Prayer. After a life of raising children, there’s possibly room for doubt. It’s only human nature to want the chance to do it over again—the right way this time. We wish upon a star as we gaze at the multitude in the night sky. The grandkids would be the stars. L1 is the longing, secret wish? L2 is the fulfillment—grandkids. The silence of the stars is the juxtaposition needed. It’s poor form to speak to your kids about your want for grandkids because it’s not your choice to make. So, the wishing must remain silent as in the silence of stars. So, this parent’s wish must remain silent for fear of meddling. Ann Sullivan has composed a concise and lyrical lament.

Sitarama Seshu Maringanti:
I live in a residential block where, every evening, small children gather to play the season’s flavour, either the game of cricket or football. Sitting in my balcony, I watch the children play on the road below. More than the technicalities, it is the arguments the children have amongst themselves about the turn of the ball or other that gives me great enjoyment. It is the musicality of the soft voices that wafts towards me that is the most pleasurable aspect of every evening. But all the musical evenings come to an end and a pall of gloomy silence descends upon the road below when the children leave the place during their school holidays. I remain seated in the balcony all alone. The haiku of Ann Sullivan made for a somewhat depressing reading reminding me of the prospect of the silent evenings when the grandkids leave on a long holiday.

Violet Avery Hall—hope in her heartache:

It is common to wish on shooting stars, as well as the first star of night, but for this poet, the stars are silent. Does this mean that there are no stars in sight on this particular night? Or perhaps the poet is continuously wishing on these very visible stars, but the stars are refusing to grant her wish. Maybe the silence of stars even represents a miscarriage. Using juxtaposition, cut, and even some wabi-sabi, Sullivan expresses her desperation for a grandchild, but there is still hope in her heartache as she continues to wish. The carefully placed cut between lines two and three gives readers a taste of the author’s longing as well. In the first two lines, we are rooting for the poem’s speaker, but the heaviness of the stars’ silence is a palpable shift. It was also clever of Sullivan to use “stars” as the plural indicates multiple wishes. Whether this poem is referring to infertility, pregnancy loss, or even a stubborn child who does not wish to have children of their own, there is much poignancy in this short senryu.

Author Ann Sullivan:

We did not receive the author’s commentary.  See the footnote section below for the Ann Sullivan’s biography.

Thanks to all who sent commentaries. As the contributor of the commentary reckoned best this week, Violet has chosen next week’s poem, which you’ll find below. We invite you to write a commentary to it. It may be short, or of moderate length, academic, your personal response, spontaneous, or idiosyncratic.  As long as it focuses on the verse presented, and with respect for the poet, all genuine reader reaction, criticism, and pertinent discussion is of value.   Out-takes are kept in the THF Archives.  Best of all, the chosen commentary’s author gets to pick the next poem.

Anyone can participate. Simply use the re:Virals commentary form below to enter your commentary on the new week’s poem (“Your text”) by the following Tuesday midnight, Eastern US Time Zone, and then press Submit to send your entry. The Submit button will not be available until Name, Email, and Place of Residence fields are filled in. We look forward to seeing your commentary and finding out about your favourite poems.

Poem for commentary:

     
Ides of March
the absentee father
calls to talk
— Yvette Nicole Kolodji
  The Heron's Nest, Volume XXIII, Number 1: March 2021

Footnotes:

Poet Bio from tinywords: Ann Sullivan is a retired lawyer/family law mediator. She lives a few miles outside Boston, Massachusetts and began writing haiku in 2020, in what turned out to be a silver lining to the Covid lockdown. Ann began her haiku journey at the same time that she began spending significant time walking and observing the natural world more closely.

Footnotes:

1. Haruo Shirane, an authority on classical Japanese literature and a writer on the legacy of haiku, writes that in many traditional Japanese haiku, “…there were two key axes: one horizontal, the present, the contemporary world; and the other vertical, leading back into the past, to history, to other poems… Bashō believed that the poet had to work along both axes. To work only in the present would result in poetry that was fleeting. To work just in the past, on the other hand, would be to fall out of touch with the fundamental nature of haikai, which was rooted in the everyday world. Haikai… depended upon the past and on earlier texts and associations for its richness… The vertical axis does not always have to be a connection to another poem. It can be what I call cultural memory, a larger body of associations that the larger community can identify with. (emphasis added) It could be about a past crisis (such as the Vietnam War or the loss of a leader) that the poet of a community is trying to come to terms with. The key here is the larger frame, the larger body of associations that carries from one generation to the next and that goes beyond the here and now, beyond the so-called haiku moment. The key point is that for the horizontal (contemporary) axis to survive, to transcend time and place, it needs at some point to cross the vertical (historical) axis; the present moment has to engage with the past or with a broader sense of time and community (such as family, national or literary history).” —from Beyond the Haiku Moment: Bashō, Buson, and Modern Haiku Myths

2. For an article on developments underway to advertise in the night sky see Space Advertising Is Now Possible. Can Anyone Stop It?

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