re:Virals 560

“More difficult than making your own verses interesting is understanding those of others…” ―Shinkei (1406 –1475). Citing this, Onitsura (1661 – 1738) wrote: “…this should be a way in which a person is completely given over to training.”

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 Keith Evetts. This week’s poem, chosen by co-host Shawn Blair in lieu of last week’s chosen commenter was:

   
a second ambulance
passes, silently
in the rain
—Alan Yan
 Acorn #56, Spring 2026

Introducing this poem, Shawn writes:

Like a fragment from some ancient saga or a snippet from a Wallace Stevens poem, there is something primordial and sublime about these few words. They appear to record an event, an extended moment, but that moment may have occurred long ago, in childhood or even in the womb or a dream. The scene may have been witnessed by the poet, or the images may have been produced and arranged such that something ineffable about our shared experience is most effectively revealed. Something has disturbed the pond, and only the diminishing ripples continue to pass by.

Host comment (Keith):

It is a couple of years, I think, since we had a verse of this nature in re:Virals. It’s an interesting one. Firstly, the verse is expressed as two semantic units but remaining grammatically continuous as one sentence, without an abrupt cut, but with a smooth perceived shift in perspective. Less orthodox in form, but nevertheless with impeccable precedents.

Secondly, the verse uses pretty highly-charged words, emotional trigger-words: ambulance, passes, silently, and rain: to convey transience, emergency, injury or death, and sorrow. These words build a theme that appeals to an ageing anglophone haiku community with a penchant for melancholy. Yet the verse succeeds in this because all these words complement each other—an harmonious arrangement of related things. It’s not over the top.

Thirdly, it is very open to a variety of readings. Dr. Watson might deduce that there has been a multiple accident or catastrophe requiring more than one ambulance; that whereas the first ambulance has passed with siren blaring in order to get a casualty to hospital in time, the second one is not in such a hurry because the other casualty or casualties are dead, either at the scene or being transported. However, Sherlock might point out that only the trailblazing ambulance in front needs to clear a path for both; or that despite a pile-up there might have been only one casualty needing urgent treatment, or that with a World Cup football match about to start, the ambulance crews are in a hurry to get back to base to watch TV and both are empty of casualties. In short, we are led to explore, the avenues are many, and there is intriguing uncertainty.

Fourthly, that little comma, which pauses us and permits the reading that “silently in the rain” applies to the poet as witness as much as to the passing ambulance. There is little so sobering as an ambulance passing by, saving only for a hearse. We wonder whether the casualty being ferried is a stranger, or an acquaintance, and may think of our friends or family. Either way, there but for fortune go you and I.

And finally, although this is presented as a moment’s observation, it’s an action-based haiku with a verb, and invites a narrative. I sometimes hear the stricture that haiku ‘do not tell a story;’ that they cannot be ‘narratives.’ I disagree. Sometimes, they can be.  As well as an allegory for our own life, Issa’s cricket singing,  while the branch that it’s on floats downriver, is part of an open-ended narrative: lights, sound, action—what fate awaits the carefree cricket further downstream? This week’s verse is cinematic. The scene could open a movie. It could be the first line of a novel, drawing us in: for it does not tell us what the story is to be. The test “would this be a good first line for a novel” is one I sometimes apply to verses like this.

For all the above, a good verse and a pleasure to comment on it.

Jennifer Gurney:

What a poignant, mournful poem. Yan’s image of a silent ambulance passing immediately made me think that the person inside the vehicle had died. A siren is not needed. There is no rush, no need to alert the drivers to move out of the way. The fact that it’s the second ambulance is even more somber, because it makes me wonder if there were others at the scene in need of an ambulance. Or perhaps it’s the second ambulance that passed silently. So maybe more than one has died.

The imagery of rain strikes me as the personification of tears. The assonance of all the s sounds (second, ambulance, passes, silently) connect the poem with the feeling of sadness. There’s a feeling of hush to all the s sounds. Everything about this poem is powerful.

Urszula Marciniak:

I had a family situation where a second ambulance arrived because the first one couldn’t help. It arrived more for formal reasons, to prolong the family’s hope for a few minutes.  The paramedics knew, but they did everything possible, and even more.

Another time, while walking home, I noticed an ambulance parked in front of the building. I didn’t know which family member it had picked up or what their condition was. Those few minutes were a silent eternity.

I live in an area with several hospitals. The sound of ambulances doesn’t attract attention; it’s normal background noise.  Recently, a private ambulance company opened right next to us. The ambulances heading to the base are moving quietly. We don’t know what happened earlier, but maybe a light rain fell on someone on a sunny day, washing away their tears. Sometimes the ambulance drives quietly because it knows it just needs to complete the final formalities. There’s no need to rush. There’s a lot of paperwork, and the family, busy searching for documents, doesn’t notice the approaching downpour.

David Cox:

Yan’s poem communicates so much seriousness in so few words. Interestingly, with no cut nor any obvious kigo, it still does much to create an unsettlingly sombre atmosphere. The poem’s impact rests on its mystery and the power of suggestion.

The beauty and bleakness of the poem are kissing cousins. The ambulance passes silently with little noise, which, apart from being at least the second in a series of approaching first responders, signals the severity of the event. The speaker can only surmise the reason. It reflects the very familiar situation of having a succession of emergency service vehicles pass by suddenly. Yet this passing is without fanfare, almost ghost-like. The lack of kireji opens the poem up to fluid enjambment, proceeding virtually unhindered like the ambulances or the rain. The subtle caesura in the second line does much to emphasise the silence of the movement in the poem. The rain, which itself has the last word, the archetypal harbinger of pathetic fallacy, may anticipate the mourning that could accompany poignant loss. Although I am at a loss for words to say what that might be.

Pamela Garry:

‘the second ambulance’ suggests to me that this was a response to an event involving multiple casualties, such as a mass shooting or an accident involving a pileup.

‘passes, silently’ opens the possibility that in this ambulance the patient has died. Perhaps the lights flash without siren as in a funeral procession.

‘in the rain’ suggests to me the all-encompassing discomfort of proceeding in a rain that is obfuscating what is going on. It also suggests an abundance of tears of sorrow.

This ku leaves me sensing the poet’s repressed anguish as an observer as a tragedy is unfolding before him.

Sudha Devi Nayak:

In times marked by violence and upheaval there could have been a massive accident or explosion and a number of ambulances may have been pressed into action for emergency care with stretchers and oxygen cylinders and medical professionals. The first one passes by without much notice but the second stops the man on the street in his tracks.

Among everyday scenes of teeming life with shoppers, office goers, business as usual, mundane realities, there is the sudden intrusion of the sick, the bloodied ,the maimed , even possible death. The sudden disruption gives us a moment of epiphany that this can visit us any time and ” there but for the grace of God go I”. “Ambulances come to rest by any kerb / All streets in time are visited” reads the eponymous poem of Philip Larkin.

What strikes the observer is not the individual tragedy but the collective vulnerability of all of us. Those lying in the ambulance, breathing individuals till tragedy struck, are far from the anchorage of love, friends and family, unreachable in the confines of the ambulance, their identities dissolving, unravelling, oscillating between lived experience and impending doom, the familiar receding from consciousness.  The bystander’s brief encounter with truth, his dawning self-recognition that he is but a cog in the universal wheel.

The traffic parts, the ambulance quietly wails past with its sirens and “brings closer what is left to come / And dulls to distance all we are“—Larkin. The ambulance makes its presence felt no doubt but in the heart of sound there is an ominous silence as it passes by. With the ambulance, the rain, the unseen inmates, the bystander, the poem gives us a peep into the existential question of life and mortality.

Radhamani Sarma:

Not the village life or hamlet where calm prevails. Now the age of advanced technology, noise pollution and over population, not a minute to breathe where “no time to stand and stare”. There were times, when the word ambulance was  seen only in a dictionary. Now every second ambulance with a horn, the threat.  All in one string, this haiku begins with the words, preparing our minds with something eerie, “a second ambulance passes, silently”, indirectly a blank silence for the readers’ question: what about the first ambulance? etc. Could be the first ambulance with honking and at full speed zig-zagging on the road, is nowhere now. The haiku writer presents a hint of conjecture. Pain of patient,  an emergency at speed—all hinted in the “first ambulance”—which is not overtly mentioned. Patient admitted in hospital, may be recovering, hope and survival in the offing. We dont know.

It could be that second ambulance passes without honk, no urgency, possibly the patient without much anxiety or tension in the ambulance: or ambulance moves in a calm path. Next, symbolically converting the “silently / in the rain” perhaps the patient is ready for rebirth, hence the blessings of rain from above. Rain, in many ways plays a vital role in all our lives. It may be hindrance, obstacle, prosperity and growth enabling in so many ways. A sentimental contrast between the silence of ambulance and (rain) splash and wash. We the readers have to apply yardstick of balance between the ambulance and silence and rain.

Ashoka Weerakkody:

When the fragment occupies the projected haiku in its totality the resultant is a mystifying creation such as this piece by Alan Yan.

We are catching a blanked out view of a foregone happening which the poet had missed, by reaching out belatedly to witness, but had to be consoled with the second best, the dull anticlimax. We are shown “a second ambulance” and that too “passes silently” and slowly as is suggestive from the last line “in the rain.”  Ambulance drivers are probably the most caring and cautious ‘pilots’ I’ve known from from my biomedical involvements at occupational level over the years, and rain or shine they always are mindful that the fragile human cargoes they carry are in a life and death struggle close behind the cockpit lying on the stretcher locked securely to the pedestal even for the few critical minutes of their transit from danger zone to the oasis of the hospital they are being lovingly and caringly repositioned by trained dedicated paramedics. The drive has to be swift and sure but safe beyond compromise.

The second ambulance passes silently which now becomes the sole activity on the road outside as seen by the poet who a minute ago was drawn out into the open from indoors having been bewildered all of a sudden by the approaching whine of the stubborn and hurried sirens that broke the peace and tranquility that prevailed inspite of intermittent rain. The rotating lights atop the vehicle, blood red and luminous blue, cast their hues through the foggy air and distantly touched everyting around as they raced past. The desired effect of sound and lighting, the red alert, took everyone’s adrenalin out for a brief deployment as if the threat to life was their’s too. Fight or flight was the reflex command and the congenitally programmed flow of the hormone gave motor power to everyone, to rush out and see what’s up.

But it was gone, like the Concorde jet, the sound had come behind the receding flyer, the masterfully skippered ambulance and into the far distance it had disappeared where the drizzle and mist hid it whole. The poet gazed on, still unconvinced of the sudden fall from great heights of curiosity, and the adrenalin was being redrawn, back into the glands.  Then mercifully, “a second ambulance” came to pass “silently in the rain.” Only the empty shell that isn’t quite an ambulance but having a dead past and unborn future as one, like that we missed just now.

The lengthy fragment made it to the end of the haiku and finished it off. Simple as that!

Alan Summers—everything depends on that comma:

A fascinating haiku, and I’m delighted it contains a comma too!

Training in the past has let me know that a silent ambulance (flashing lights only) moving slowly is the most unnerving sight, and even more important to let pass. Two ambulances possibly both going ‘silent’ is even more intensely worrying. Does the presence of a comma merely prevent a run-on clause or short sentence:

a second ambulance
passes silently
in the rain

A second ambulance passes silently in the rain.

Both “non-comma versions” retain tension, though inserting a comma ramps up that tension; and a strong filmic imagery too. Is it just the ambulances in the rain, or a large incident, traffic accident perhaps, where the rain appears to fall silently almost bearing witness to victims and various emergency service workers alike. Personally, as a run on clause or short sentence without the comma it does not have such a dramatic effect for me:

A second ambulance passes, silently in the rain.

It’s as if the comma is acting as some kind of loaded pause, even as ‘kire’. It might even break the rules of grammar, where haiku can so often commit this beautiful defiance. A good test for me, on a regular basis, is reading a haiku multiple times, sometimes a hundred occasions or more. I am never bored, as in this case, where the tension within the spaces, those white echoes, as well as the “seen” words themselves, plus “that comma,” all make this is a very special haiku for me.

The word “comma” traces back to the Ancient Greek word [kómma] which literally means “a cut-off piece” or a “short clause”–wikipedia.  Ancient Greek Meaning (≈ 3rd Century BCE): The root verb means “to cut” or “to strike:” marking a natural pausing point for readers.

On a few internet searches: “Gen Z often skips punctuation in casual messaging because it conveys tone, speed, and emotion rather than grammatical correctness. For their generation standard text formatting can feel overly formal or hostile.”  I can understand that, in texting or other messaging on social media platforms; though in other creative writing genres, the comma can be a formidable friend, not foe.

Back to the ambulances, a hopeful feeling in my case is that they are returning to base after a long work shift….

Author Alan Yan:

I’ve been recently reading Adam Zagajewski’s Asymmetry again. The poem “That Day” claims that the news of a death is when the dead are “at the strongest / point of [their] existence.” This haiku is interested in that moment: the strength of that silence.

Thanks to all who sent commentaries. As the contributor of the commentary reckoned best this week, Alan Summers has chosen next week’s poem, which you’ll find below. We invite you to write a commentary to it. It may be short, to a maximum of 500 words (succinctness will be valued);  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. Please note that commentaries must be your own personal work.

Poem for commentary:

     
fading foothills the marriage lost in creeping sepia
 —Shelli Jankowski-Smith
  The Pan Haiku Review Inaugural Issue, Spring 2023

Footnote:

Bio:

Alan Yan’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Peripheries, The Manhattan Review, and the anthology The Poetry of Grief, Gratitude, and Reverence. His haiku have appeared in Acorn, Chrysanthemum, Frogpond, Kingfisher, Modern Haiku, Presence, The Heron’s Nest, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Congratulations also to David Cox for a fine commentary.  Hard to decide…

I shouldn’t reproduce Adam Zagajewski’s “That Day” here, but someone else has done it for us on open Facebook here.

Late extra:  shortly before the scheduled appearance of this post we received a late but substantive commentary from Mike Barrett which is given here:

Sometimes, some of the best haiku are those that leave more unsaid, remaining ambiguous in what exactly is happening. We get the picture, but not the story.
A second ambulance – the haiku poet sees it, the choice of words indicate that a first must have come by at some point.
Passes, silently – there it is, it was coming towards the poet, and there it goes. The instant the haiku occurs is at the moment the ambulance passes.
In the rain – the haiku concludes. The ambulance has gone, all that remains is the sound of rain. That is all we know. Some of my questions: were they both going the same way? Was the haiku poet also driving as they pass? Was it silent in contrast to the rain, or in contrast to the first ambulance that passed? Having an answer to each question changes the direction of the haiku considerably.

Going both the same way reminds me of Tom Clausen’s haiku –

going the same way…
exchanging looks with the driver
of the hearse

This feeling of inevitability. First one ambulance… then another… what has happened. What are they heading towards? If the haiku poet is also going the same way, he is soon to find out, but he is not there yet – there is that brief moment of anticipation and dread. Even if he is not, then there is that relief, what has he missed, what happened that he barely avoided? The haiku no doubt has a sabi undertone, but in each case the result is slightly different. Otherwise the ambulances going the same way could be coming from the accident. This becomes much more significant, as one ambulance with sirens may carry the injured. When a second follows without sirens… they could be carrying the deceased.
If the ambulances were driving in opposite directions then anither question remains, was it even a different ambulance? Ambulance drivers would often have sirens on when driving to a casualty, but once the patient is in the van, they try to stay silent for the journey back (until they need to alert traffic) so as not to unnecessarily disturb the injured person. The situation then underlies feelings of dread or melancholy. Although he may not be directly involved with the ambulances, he may simply be looking on if he is a pedastrian. As a driver however, he cannot help but be involved as they pass him.

Any driver who must deal with multiple emergency vehicles know how it feels to navigate away from their path – how we make a difference between whether they get there on time or not, the panic, slight dignified confusion. I feel this actually comes through in a technique the haiku poet omits – the use of a kireji. Reading it, there is no distinct phrase or fragment. It reads as one continual thought. The second ambulance could be considered a fragment… with it’s passing in the rain the phrase, but then where would the cut be? At the end of the first line, or the comma after it passes? Although punctuation is often looked down upon in haiku, with the lack of a clear cut, the comma acts perfecly as a way of both splitting the poem in two as well as creating a pause in the second line – a moment of reflection, something the kireji seeks to accomplish. It emphasises the word ‘silently’, making it stand out among the other 7 words.

So in what way was the ambulance silent? Even from a young age we learn the ‘nee-naw’ of an ambulance siren. The absence of it however brings something more austere. It could almost be that the first ambulance startled the haiku poet, rousing him from his focus on the road, from his thoughts, from his destination, from his interests, and catapults it to the incoming situation and to anyone that is directly involved with these ambulances. The second ambulance however, merely coasted by without a noise. Without a doubt, the sound of the rain is made louder by the absence of a noise coming from the ambulance, or is the silence of the ambulance made louder against the repetitive patter patter of rain? This rain is not just added on, it is as signifcant as the ambulance, reflecting the way the poet now feels – a rain outside but a rain inside also. Day or night, we get that feeling of a gloomy darkness that has now appeared due to the simple line ‘in the rain’.

Some may feel the unconventional way this haiku is written – a lack of a clear kireji, no kigo, etc is a weak point but I feel it does a great job at tying it all together. It would be a bit long on one line, a two line haiku could work but then you lose that sense of chaos that the format provides. As discussed at the outset, the three lines lends itself well to the moment that is occuring, transient and sudden. For the haiku poet, the person in the ambulance and maybe for us, the haiku continues long after the vehicle is gone.

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