Haiku Poetry Inspired by a Poem, The Mountain

Haiku Poetry Inspired by a Poem, The Mountain

here are 12 haiku inspired by Emma Wakpi’s poetry, The Mountain

our children will know

how we lived for a short time

and how we failed them.

while we raze mountains

old folk die with our kastoms

and our future fades:

men bled this land dry – 

drank it up in steel monsters

roaring night and day

somewhere in Mosbi

are papers with all our names

and what we were paid

near ruined rivers 

of mud, littered with dead trees

where fish feed on filth

behind bubu’s grave 

lies debris, rubble and dust

where two mountains stood

there lived a white man

and there lived three yellow men –

wantoks lived there too

steel carcasses rust

slowly in overgrown bush

where their work was done

more men cut down trees,

women whore, give birth and die – 

some children survive

guns guard forest camps

and children no longer play

where bubu hunted

no school for children 

whose sick stepmothers garden

where trees once towered

planes still land nearby

every few years, then fly off

with no passengers

from asopa.typepad