PAD Day 21: Some Weird Haiku and a Sonnet

Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "love" and/or "anti-love" poem, and (2) write a "homophonic translation" - that is, take a poem in a foreign language you don't know, then try to write it in English using the sounds and/or appearance of the words in the foreign language. I must admit I had a hard time getting started on this today, partly because the second prompt is one of my least favorite, and I never seem to get a decent poem out of it. Also, I wasn't able to combine the two prompts today, so I had to come up with two poems, but I decided to come up with and "curtal sonnet" (invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins), so I'll present that first. Oh yeah, and I also incorporated this week's word bank from the Sunday Whirl blog, using all of the following words from the bank in my sonnet: fire, tiny, dream, mourn, torn, lift, shy, shock, lock, stories, truth, light. The fact that two pairs of those words rhyme was partly responsible for my choosing a rhyming form.

Parenting in the Plague

I try to keep an optimistic fire

with little ones around, and save the light

from burning out, but yet I keep the locks

turned tight, and try hard not to sound too dire -

with bedtime stories, "sweet dreams" wished each night,

then steel myself from all the news that shocks.

Truth is, I need a tiny lift - I mourn

those taken much too soon by this damned blight.

I keep my shy young charges in this box

I call a home, and make sure it's not torn

                                                  by stopping clocks.

And here's the "translation" poem. I deliberately chose a short poem (actually three haiku) to lessen my suffering (LOL). It's by a contemporary Basque poet named Kirmen Uribe. I didn't read the English translation till I did my "homophonic" poems, but I was impressed by his short pieces and the backstory (He was imprisoned for refusing mandatory service in the Spanish Army.)

[original]

ESPETXEKO HAIKUAK

1.

Kartzelan nago.
Lehenengo zirrara:
izerdi-sunda.

Sarraila hotsa,
orbanak paretetan.
Bakartasuna.

Leihotik beha,
jantzi marraduna du
iretargiak.

[my "translation"]

carts go along:

let them go, sorrow -

it's early Sunday.

surreally hot,

urban partitions,

baking art of sun.

Exotic, behave -

jaunty, merry, do not do -

you're a target.

[English translation by Elizabeth Macklin]

JAILHOUSE HAIKU

I’m here in the jail.
The very first of the shocks:
the stink of the sweat.

The sound of the lock,
the blotchy stains on the walls.
And then solitude.

Out of this window,
the moon itself is wearing
a stripy costume.