The Owl who dreams

The moon says farewell

as the owl looks at the clouds

covering the open skies

The moon in my palm

disappears as water slips

through my fingers - farewell love

***


La lune fait ses adieux
quand la chouette regarde les nuages
couvrant le ciel ouvert

by ninotaziz

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There is an idiom in Malay, "Bagai punggok rindukan bulan"

It means, Like the Owl who dreams of the moon, and signifies one pining for a love they can never have.

I am beginning to believe that we Asians, because love was once-upon-a-time a secret, often undeclared affair, play havoc with imagination and thus write poetry to express this deep longing and overwhelming feelings that otherwise would simply drown us (long sentences are bad form but here, it was  unavoidable).

We have pantun, ghazal and now sedoka.

This week, Samuel Peralta confirms this once again through his post, The Princess' Poem.

As a poetic form, the sedoka is one of the rarest forms today, not often seen even within its native Japan. And yet, some scholars have contended that one of the greatest poems of the Japanese language is a sedoka – a poem composed as a declaration of love by the Princess Nukata. Read more here

And Kelvin talks about idioms this week. So, here is a Japanese sedoka based on an ancient Malay idiom.