A Shakespearean Distillation

on sweet-scented days
absence casts wintry shadows
colours fade to grey

Kim M. Russell, 22^nd May 2019

My response to Carpe Diem #1631 A new chapter: leaving the Kumano Kodo

Today we are being inspired by a Shakespearean sonnet, Sonnet 98 or ‘From you have I been absent in the spring, in an episode of the Carpe Diem special feature ‘Distillation’: a challenge to create a haiku or tanka inspired by a given longer poem:

Sonnet 98: From you have I been absent in the spring

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight
Drawn after you, – you pattern of all those.
    Yet seem’d it winter still, and, you away,
    As with your shadow I with these did play.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)