sayonara-no katate-ni nokoru samusa kana

the hand that waved

goodbye has kept with it

the cold ...

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Akiko Doi (1963-). From "Fictional Illustration" (Esora), Tokyo, 2025.

It is winter and the poet has just bid goodbye to some friends. Because it is so cold they left one hand in their pocket perhaps, causing it to remain warmer than the other, or maybe just the act of waving cooled their hand such that they feel the cold in it more than in the other. Either way, the concretely felt and expressed reality of the cold temperature resonates well with the psychologically cold and sad feeling of saying goodbye to someone. That sadness has remained as coldness felt within the poet's hand. The original Japanese does not concretely state that the hand is waved but rather reads "goodbye/'s/ hand/in it/ remains/ the cold!"

Selected, translated and commented on by Dhugal J. Lindsay

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Pique your poetic interest with more Haiku in English here.