My Haiku

Haiku.
Roland Barthes, a French author  and expert of Japanese literature in the twentieth century, wrote that we  are not able to really understand the Japanese verse called haiku. During my journey to South East Asia, I composed  travel haiku and published the poems in the booklet entitled With a Hat shading the Light - an allude to the Indonesian Wajang Play.

In the Dutch text, I stick to the basic haiku rule of three lines and the rhythm of 5-7-5 syllables. I abandoned this rule in  the English translation and focused on the number of sound units.  In the original Japanese haiku, Nature had always its place. This is not the case in the verses I wrote.  Here, I publish the poems out of their original context. I think this is acceptable, while the Japanese haiku traditionally  had been detached from a longer poem and had been set aside as a little stand alone verse.

Read on

A general introduction to the book online (in Dutch)

A general introduction to the book-online
‘With a Hat shading the Light’

To go on line with a book is running against the medium. Something of the past put into the present. That is why I wrote a summary in English of my book in dutch, entitled 'With a Hat shading the Light', written in the year 2000 (translation of the dutch title: "Met de Hoed tegen het Licht").

But I did more.Five years later I went back to South East Asia and this time I took a lot of pictures with a digital camera as every modern hiker does. So, I now present on line a summary of the book, some parts of the text and a small selection of my pictures. A step forward to modernity.

Apart from this, I selected haiku from my book and translated them. This is what is not done. It is like calling a duck a penguin duck as Alfred Wallace mentioned they did on Bali. To ease myself ', I combined the haiku texts with pictures – another 'don’t.' A haiku is a world in itself. It is language, a thing composed of words, no other stuff. Basta.

Why I did this all? It is for the thrill of traveling and writing. Hopefully you’ll feel the thrill of reading.

"With a Hat shading the Light"

At the end of the year 1999, I traveled in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. I had been several times in Indonesia as a civil servant of the Netherlands government. My field of concern in those days was technological and economic cooperation between the two countries. The large archipelago of islands and its many landscapes of desa's and rice fields, of volcanoes and mountains, of its historical monuments had cast a spell on me. Once upon a day, I promised myself to come back and see Indonesia more in private, to have a look behind the screens of formality and diplomatic politeness. This time, I would go for the people and their daily life, their traditions and ceremonies, their works of art, the mysterious ambiance and the beauty of the landscapes so intensely labored by so many people. The Japanese haiku poet Basho joined me as a poetic companion and the Portuguese author Pessoa helped me to better understand the invisible things of life. Two or better, three strangers in Indonesia, experts however in observing, poetry and traveling.

I traveled in central and eastern Java, the flat lands and the high plateaus, the crowded, noisy cities, the lonely mountains and the volcanoes. I visited the tropical garden of Bogor, Bandung with its colonial and Art Deco reminiscences, hotels and shop signs, Yogyajakarta and its the famous but quiet and musical kraton of the Sultan, the nearby Buddhist Borobudur and Hindustani Prambanan monument. Then, I went to the small town of Blitar and its mausoleum of the first Indonesian President, Sukarno, continuing to Malang and its colonial air and impressive boulevards. I visited Jember and its old plantations of coffee and rubber. The island of Java has so many mystery sites and scenic areas. It is a world of contrasts and conflicts, of thriving activity and poverty. At the same time, Java is an island of beauty and the ever singing Muezzin, of overcrowded cities and desa's along never ending roads. Java steals the soul, so I never can leave her behind.

On Bali I stayed at the artistic village of Ubud in the hills, I visited the Pura Besakih, the Gunung Kawi (mountain) and the caves of Goa Gajah. On Lombok it was the Sasak village of Senaru and a Hindu ceremony that brought me closer to the original life of the island. In Sulawesi, I traveled by public bus for miles and miles from Makassar in the south to the northern tip, the city of Menado and stayed for some time in the central region, the Tana Toraja and its marvelous villages from where I went to see the balconies of the dead, the wooden and well dressed-up puppets ( tau tau) high up in the steep cliffs. In Malaysia I traveled by luxury bus and stayed at Malakka with the flavor of old Dutch architecture and colorful Chinatown, Buddhist and Taoist little temples. Thailand I didn’t know, so I was impressed by the forest of Buddha temples and its realm of silence in the big, noisy cities of Bangkok and Chiang Mai. I made day trips to the old capital of Thailand, the complex of temple ruins in Ayuthaya and to Kanchanaburi, the railway across the River Kwae and the well kept war cemetery. To escape the crowds and the loudness I went on jungle trekking for some days and returned after three days to go home, to the little island of Curacao in the Caribbean. This is the topographic side of the medal.

In this booklet, I try to do more than just telling this story of my travel. With the help of Basho I make notes and use the haiku technique to bring together my observations and the wanderings of the mind. So, I write about little things as f.e. a morning stroll in the sawa's (rice fields), the pinpointing of my mosquito net in a hostel, the minibus as a high pressure cooker for passengers, the royal diving of a kingfisher, a horror story ( guna guna) in the night, a canoe and hidden crocodiles, the daily loneliness of a Dutch speaking shopkeeper, gold fishes in a lake, the burning of fragrance sticks in a Chinese temple, the buy of a Buddha image on a market, a stony turtle and a bat, the smoking of opium by an old woman. All short stories or poetic tales, little histories, minor happenings and meditative reflections on the little things of daily life. These stories and tales have their own style and point. Leaf through the book and find your story or poem. Taste the sweetness or the spicy flavor.



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The Author

Derk Cools is born in 1939 in Den Haag / The Hague, the  Netherlands. After high school, he enters the university of Utrecht and gets his degree of human geography and economics.  In 1965, he joins the Army and finally  serves as lieutenant. As a civil servant with the Ministry of Economic Affairs, he becomes an expert in regional economic planning, technology development and international economic and industrial cooperation. He publishes several papers on integrated planning for the OECD.  After the fall of the Berlin wall, he helps to develop and apply  programs for industrial restructuring in previous East European countries as Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Rumania.  In 1994, he retires and moves to the Netherlands Antilles, the island of Curacao in the Caribbean..


Since 1995, he frequently travels to the Midwest of America, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and further to Montana, Wyoming, California (in 1994- 1999), to Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand (in 1999 and 2005) and to Central America, Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize (in 2004) and Nicaragua and Costa Rica (in 2005).




In 2002, his  book   'Met de Hoed tegen het Licht' (reizen door Zuid-oost Azië) is published. In a way, it's a travel book, but also a meditation of life. The haiku poet Bashõ is his comrade on the road.
In 2009, he returns to South east Asia and particularly Laos and its former capital Luang Prabang. He travels also to Indonesia, Bali and West Papua. At the end of 2009, a new booklet is edited, entitled Seven days in the Baliemvalley, West Papua ( in dutch: Zeven dagen in de Baliemvallei. And again, it is a spiritual journey and an experiment in mental geography.  In 2011, he writes and publishes a more or less historical documentary book about his aunt, 'Een dochter van Epicurus', you can order through www .amazon.de in Europe or outside the EU via lulu.com  It contains a sketch of the post-War years in the Netherlands, the setting of the life of his aunt, a social democrat and Epicurist in practice.


Apart from writing, he loves literature, hiking ,swimming and jeu de boules. His recent  favourites are books of the German author W.G. Sebald, the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, the French novelist le Clézio, the modern Dutch poet Nachoem Wijnberg and the Portugese author Antonio Lobo Antunes.


At times he writes haikus. A kind of hubris.