The Sound of Silence

the frozen river
ebbs and flows with the wolf moon
a silent heartbeat

Kim M. Russell, 2018

My response to Carpe Diem’s The Sound of Silence #1 introduction

Our new feature at CDHK was inspired by an article in a mindfulness magazine, entitled ‘Inner Stillness’, which began with a quote from the Persian poet Rumi: “Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation”.

Chèvrefeuille asks how we can bring ‘silence within’, ‘inner stillness’ or ‘silence’ into our haiku and reminds us that haiku is known as the poetry of nature and in nature we can find inner peace. Haiku is not only the poetry of nature, but also the poetry of silence, in which we capture silence not only through the scene, but also through the use of almost no words – enough to paint a wonderful image.

Which is why he asks us to create haiku (or tanka) in which we bring together silence and nature and try to include a spiritual layer, because silence and nature are connected in a spiritual way, they belong together – bringing one of the classical rules, ‘a deeper meaning’, back into our Japanese poetry.