....Volume 1, Number 1, July 2003


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Horst Ludwig

Horst Ludwig, Associate Professor of German at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota, USA, originally from Germany, is active in Pegnesischer Blumenorden von 1644 (Pegnesian Flower Order of 1644) in Nuremberg, in Deutsche Haiku-Gesellschaft (German Haiku Society), Haiku International Association, Tokyo, Haiku Society of America, and other literary and linguistic associations. 1981 he published *Wind im Bambusspiel: Sechsunddreißig Haiku* (Wind in bamboo chimes: 36 haiku), which was reissued 1991 with an English translation by Nancy Hanson Nash. In 1993 he won the Robert L. Kahn Prize for the best German poetry text by a resident of North America. At the 2001 Suruga Baika Literature Festival, his "Outside the clinic / a crow, slow, stepping away / from some carrion" received the Certificate of Excellence, and his "Icy funeral - / the old florist arriving / late with his flowers" was recognized as one of the three best texts in the 2001 issues of *kô: Haiku Magazine in English* ["immaculate"]. In 2002 he won a Supplementary Award in the Hoshi to Mori Tanka Competition with "Some summer evenings / the Angelus bells still ring / from the rich city // which the sea once swallowed up / many centuries ago." Also in 2002, his haiku "A child in the door / watching the old man walk by / in the autumn rain" was given a 3rd Prize in the 7th Kusamakura Haiku Competition of Kumamoto City, Japan.


Osterliedprobe.
Am Grab des Musiklehrers
ein Vaterunser.

Practicing the Easter songs.
At the music teacher's grave
an Our Father.

Die Schatten schwinden,
und der Abend wird kühler
hier auf dem Friedhof.

The shadows vanish
and the evening's getting cooler
here at the cemetary.

Erste Nacht mit Frost.
Die Himmelskörper scheinen
klarer auf alles.

First night with frost.
The celestial bodies shine
more clearly on everything.

Helle Winternacht.
Frisch knirscht ein Schatten mit mir
den Gehsteig entlang.

Bright winter night.
A shadow crunching fresh with me
along the sidewalk.


Zwei weiße Reiher -
weit ins Dunkel versinkend -
und silbern der Mond.

Two white herons -
sinking far away into darkness -
and silvery the moon.


Translation by Horst Ludwig.

Horst Ludwig
Copyright © 2003


 

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