So we escaped to the State Library, an edifice of the state that is disarmingly cool and inviting. Chilly inside, like the personal offices of a South East Asian statesman (for they have internalised colonial myths that connect laziness with humidity and heat).

And I selected a volume of Haiku, printed at the height of the old empire, spilling its pages like so many crisp syllables.

I learned of the history of the form, and found this to be my sultry favourite, very suited to the weather:

Koibito wo Omo-

Okie mitsu
Nete mitsu kaya no
Hirosa kana

Longing for My Sweetheart

I sit up or lie down and yet,
How large is the mosquito-net!
By Ukihashi (a poetess)

Here now are a few that I wrote, so taken by the form was I, that I might have been a 90′s yuppie, clothed in kimono, trimming bonzai, practicing calligraphy, rolling sushi and so forth:

Broken Skin

A peach bursts its skin
And spills out all of its life
Into the fruit bowl.

Starry-eyed

Cold light in my cell.
It burns my eyes, catches dust:
Now planets, now stars.

Glow

Summer’s sun light burns
Now not seeing light that shines
lower than before.

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