Lynn Wagner
Always a fan of Pablo Neruda’s great odes, I wrote the first poem while practicing the Anglo-Saxon line. “Zoo haiku” is a playful experiment – contrary to what you see here, I really don’t believe in following syllables as we bring haiku into English.
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Neruda
O you marvelous maker of music
whose succulent Spanish celebrated all
the ten thousand thousand things
of our timeworn world when you wrote
open-hearted odes: knowing
songs on such small and strange objects
as piscine scissors, soft woolly socks,
y perro y gato, plato y pan.
Neruda, you never knew a thing
you didn’t like. Dutiful diviner of
unsettled sorrow shaped as a guitar.
Childlike, you charmed us, cataloging
joy in this or that thingamajig; ever
weighing our wants finding them wanting.
O wooer of wonder what should we do?
Teach us, the terrible materialists
to answer life’s appetites with awe.
For nothing is simply nominal. No,
a cache of love is kept in common things.
Previously published in Chautauqua Literary Review, Spring 2006, 7.
Zoo Haiku
licks his lips and yawns
solitary tiger eyes
small boy / red balloon
the pink flamingo
dreams. Peoples his trim lawn with
pairs of plastic men
swimming in circles
the polar bear swears she’s home
in endless oceans
backstage the penguins
wish they could slip off their ties
skip the matinee
almost every
Sunday the tarantulas
carefully make love
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