Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Carpe Diem's "Use that Quote" #3, Mahatma Gandhi


Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Another episode of "Use That Quote" in which the goal is to write a haiku, senryu, tanka or kyoka inspired on the given quote.
For this episode I have chosen for a wonderful quote by one of my heroes ... Mahatma Gandhi who fought against the oppression of the United Kingdom with his non-violence policy. As I saw the movie "Gandhi" I was inspired and I wrote an essay with his ideas as base about the oppression of our homosexual neighbours and the growing intolerance against them here in The Netherlands.

The quote for this episode is:

[...] "You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind" [...] – Mahatma Gandhi


Mahatma Gandhi

It will not be an easy task I think, because in this quote there is no real nature, but ... well have to try it. You don't have to use the text as it is given, you can use it for inspiration and that's what I tried when I wrote this haiku:

like a chain of iron
the Wisteria climbs against the wall
reaching for the sky


reaching for the sky
the silver birches in my garden
without leaves

without leaves
a tree looks very much alive
following his own path


I hope you understand the inspiration which I took from the quote ... I think this is a nice trio of haiku, but that's not up to me to say ...
This episode of "Use That Quote" is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until February 19th 11.59 AM (CET). Have fun ....