About the translator: Anne Fairbairn, is a widely published Australian poet, artist and journalist. In 1998 she was awarded one of Australia's highest honours when made a member of the Order of Australia (AM) - for services to literature as a poet and to international relations, particularly between Australia and the Middle East. Since 1980 she has been involved in building a Bridge of Poems between Australia and the Arab world. She has won numerous awards and honours for literature in Australia and abroad. Her many publications include Shadows of our Dreaming (Angus and Robertson 1983), a celebration of early Australia with haiku-like poems set beside her evocative black and white drawings. In 1999 Fairbairn was contracted by the Australian government to compile a volume of poetry to celebrate the Centenary of Federation of Australia. The examples of her haiku in this Anthology are taken from her recent compilation, Djuringa Haiku.
Leaf
They carried him in silence,
leaving him in an open place
of crosses and gravestones,
in a vast, open space
with his sleeping friends.He had said, 'I'll be back,
the key is under a flowerpot.'
A leaf from the flower
was still in
his hand.Wadih Sa'adeh
Night Visit
They were telling their children about
the guardian angel of plants;
about a nightingale that had flown there at dawn
to sing in the mulberry tree above their window.
They were telling them about the grapes
they would sell to buy new clothes.
About the special surprise the children
would find under their pillows at bedtime.
But some soldiers arrived,
stopped their stories,
leaving red splashes on the walls
as they departed.Wadih Sa'adeh
Threshold
He was dead
but he could feel their fingers on his forehead.
They laid his body in the centre of the house
on a bed they had hired,
like the one he should have bought.
They dressed him
in clothes like those he had seen in city shops.
When they carried him out to be buried,
he left something strange on the threshold.
After that, whenever they entered the house
they shivered without knowing why.Wadih Sa'adeh