Viral 2.2

Virals is a section in which one person choses a haiku by another person and comments on that haiku. Then the author of that haiku is invited to select a haiku by someone else and comment on that poem, and so on. For an introduction to this section, see Virals.

Partings    by Roberta Beary

                             raven’s cry
                             all the partings
                             still to come

                                                — Dietmar Tauchner

In reading this haiku of Dietmar Tauchner’s, which appeared in the anthology dandelion clocks (Haiku Society of America 2008) and was previously published in The Heron’s Nest (X:1, March, 2008), I was struck by its beautiful simplicity. I immediately thought of two well-known American poets, Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Dickinson.

The opening line’s plaintive cry evokes Poe’s poem “The Raven,” the well-known work that tells the story of an unwelcome visitor to a young man mourning his lost love.

The last two lines of the haiku call to mind Dickinson’s poem “My life closed twice before its close” (#1732, Little, Brown and Company, 1961):

                                   My life closed twice before its close —
                                   It yet remains to see                            
                                   If Immortality unveil                             
                                   A third event to me                              

                                   So huge, so hopeless to conceive      
                                   As these that twice befell.                   
                                   Parting is all we know of heaven,       
                                   And all we need of hell.                      

Tauchner’s haiku takes us into the realm of sabishi, the Japanese term suggesting loneliness or a sad longing. The feeling of loneliness in the haiku goes beyond the moment, reaching into both the future and the past. Contemplating “all the partings still to come,” the reader cannot help but think of those partings he or she has experienced. Each individual reader’s understanding of the haiku is colored by a personal history of separation and loss. It is this quality of sabishi which gives Tauchner’s eight words their depth and universal appeal.