Poet and didn't know it

[nineveh_uk]

According to the British haiku society, an organisation whose website appears to indicate that their only association with the word 'joy' is that it is one syllable, a haiku 'should derive from spontaneous, concrete, personal experience in a certain moment of heightened awareness'. In that sense, the following certainly qualifies...

Holy fuck!
Through the train window
The Eiger's north face.





Actually, I think I said 'Fucking hell!', and I can't be bothered to find the volume of my diary to check if I ever wrote it down, but 'Holy fuck! scans better. It is in any case one of the most extraordinary sights in nature that I have ever seen. It bursts out of the scenery in a way that the above pic, which I have not managed to re-size, bursts out of the flist.

Comments

[moon_custafer]

I don’t know about the BHS, but I believe Mssrs. Basho and Issa would approve.

[nineveh_uk]

Thank you! Having never read any Issa, I just read this: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50983/selected-haiku-by-issa Brilliant.

[moon_custafer]

I always liked:

You stupid scarecrow!
Under your very stick-feet
Birds are stealing beans.

[pensnest]

A magnificent sight in a photo, must be stupendous in reality.

[nineveh_uk]

It really is a monster of a mountain. Alas that the exchange rate is so rubbish these days since I went!

[azdak]

Oh, I thought you were sitting on a Swiss train even as you posted, taking amazing photos and composing swift haikus. It does make more sense that it was composed in retrospect, though, and it really does capture the experience.

[nineveh_uk]

Alas, no! Much as I should like to be in Grindelwald with nothing to care for but art and hiking, it was 2008 and the photo is via Google ( I do have some I took, but couldn't be bothered to find them, such is modern life).

[highlyeccentric]

WOW

[nineveh_uk]

It's more than a mile high - I mean, the vertical face, not the mountain, which is obviously more than that from sea level- it really is amazing.

[highlyeccentric]

oh I know, although I haven't seen it this close up (my best view of it is from Schnigge Platte). What train was this from?