Thaidhcu nan Gaidheal / Gaelic Haiku

Haiku is a form of writing that provides an interesting test of language itself. Reading or attempting to write haiku presents problems unique to the language in which they are rendered. Haiku very effectively penetrate the expressive capacity of a language to reveal something of the limited nature of each.

And so in Europe we find that polite Romance languages and refined hybrids such English fail to replicate the directness delivered by Japanese, having been used as vehicles for diplomacy and evasion for centuries. In contrast, languages like Scots or Danish combine muscular engagement with a subject and ironic circumspection to create haiku that are formidable poetic outcomes English cannot reproduce. Nowhere does translation seem more inadequate.

I encountered a third scenario when attempting haiku in Gaelic.

At first I thought the language, sharpened and optimised by the passage of millenia into an instrument ideal for highly nuanced social interaction, with its array of prepositional pronouns and aversion to crude formulations of possession or attribution, allowing eloquence in praise and subtleties of expression of which English is incapable, would be one the sudden paradoxical realities of haiku might elude while it concerned itself with lyric pleasures and mythic introspections.

However, I found that, in Gaelic, three related haiku in succession could deliver a cumulative effect that exploits the unique characteristics of the language in a way a single haiku does not achieve. I present a couple of examples of these triple haiku below. 

Rionnagan soillear
torr smuirneanan ri cheile
creutairan le tlachd:

ged a tha i fliuch,
frasach fo cheò is ceò-bhraon,
dearrs mo rionnag fhathast.

Deoch kamikaze,
bainne neònach's daorachail:
bó chama-chasach

Bright stars, heaped particles,
sparks celebrating together,
delightful creatures:

even if it rains
with smirr beneath the mist and cloud,
my star still shines

as I swill my kamikaze drink!

A strange and intoxicating milk
from a bow-legged cow.

An talamh tràighte,
aonarach ás déidh uisge
fo baideal neòil

Na h-eoin sàmhach,
balbh mar beul falamh,
lag gun càil ás ùr,

pit tioram 's ìotach
gun facal mìorbhaileach
air bile gaoithe.

The drought-drained earth
yearning, aching after water
beneath battlements of cloud

The birds, quiet,
dumb like an empty mouth,
a hollow without anything new,

a vulva, parched and dry
missing the miraculous words
upon the lips of the wind.

There has been an unfortunate outbreak of anti-Gaelic sentiment in Scotland recently, with politicians and newspapers uncritically repeating demonstrable falsehoods to promote a rabble-rousing agenda that appeals to the basest instincts of intolerance among a monoglot mob hostile to Gaelic.

As a national community it is our responsibility and privilege to curate that portion of the world's cultural patrimony that has been transmitted to us by previous generations. This task falls to no-one else. While we rightly celebrate and participate in contributions to our continually evolving society that originate elsewhere, adopting and adapting them until they too become something we will transmit to future generations, we alone have a duty of care towards Gaelic culture on the world's behalf.

I hope my discussion here goes some way to encouraging understanding of the value of language beyond the merely utilitarian. Words do not just enable us to instruct and respond to colleagues, clients, and business partners. They equip us to say how we feel, and to know ourselves, using an apparatus that has been refined and improved through all of our ancestors encounters with success and failure alike, providing us with a literature that enriches us with their achievements. Our ecstasies and despondencies are not the first, nor will they be the last, and they find their utterance all the more easily for what went before.