Haiku and Tankas by Azril Bacal, Peruvian Poet, Agricultural Engineer and Sociologist
Haiku
Busca botellas
y halla azucenas
en el basural
__________________
While looking for
bottles she found daisies
in the garbage
A las flores que
me distraen las llamo
de pensamientos
__________________
To the flowers that
distract my attention I
call “pensamientos”
Te ví amarilla
y quise ser tu verde
y protegerte
__________________
Your yellowness
struck me, made me wish to
be green and guard you
Tankas
Son la risa y
el llanto la savia que
se hacen verso
las voces que se oyen
en los tonos del poema
__________________
Laughter and tears
are sap turned into
music and poems
in voices whose tones
we listen to in poems
Siguen cantando
las vocales en noches
de plenilunio
grillos del aleph-bets en
noches alfabetales
__________________
Some vowels keep
singing under the full moon
they are crickets
disguised aleph-bets in
the alphabetal darknes
Llegas Otoño
este año prematuro
sin permitirnos
saborear las fresas
del verano ausente
__________________
This Fall has fallen
in haste it has stolen
the taste from us
of the summer’s wild berries
of a summer that was not
© Azril Bacal
Azril Bacal is a Peruvian Agricultural Engineer and Sociologist. A university lecturer since 1967 in Perú (UNALM and Catholic University), México, Spain, USA (Humanities Endowement Schollar at Otterbein College, Ohio 1995), Visiting Senior Lecturer on Ethnicity at UCLA (1996) and Sweden: Retired Senior Lecturer at Karlstad University and Uppsala University (2006). Consultant-Expert at UNESCO-OREALC (Santiago de Chile) and at the Instituto Indigenista Interamericano (México) in the 1980s.
Currently, Azril is Senior Researcher affiliated to the “Instituto de la Pequeña Producción Sostenible” (IPPS) at the National Agricultural University La Molina (UNALM) in Perú.
Azril was a member of the Paulo Freire Institute and International Board Member, Currently, he is Board Member of RC-10 on “Participation, Organizational Democracy and Self-Management” (International Sociological Association). Member of the Network “Universidad y Compromiso Social,” Seville, Spain.
He has published extensively on issues of education, cultural diversity, anti-racism, cultures of peace and citizenship. Amongst his publications – ‘Citizenship and National Identity in Latin America: The Persisting Salience of Race and Ethnicity’ in Oommen (ed.), Citizenship and National Identity: From Colonialism to Globalism, 1997; Ethnic Discrimination: Comparative Perspectives, Uppsala Universitet: Research Report from the Department of Sociology , 1992; 2 ; Ethnic Discrimination in Sweden: Basic Issues and Reflections, Uppsala Universitet: Op. Cit. 1992: 53-69; From Organism to Identity: The Road from Psychology to Social-Psychology. Towards an Epistemology of Self-Determination, University of Karlstad, Department of Social Sciences, Section of Communication, Working Paper 1994; 1. Ethnic Identity Responses of Mexican Americans to Ethnic Discrimination (Gothenburg, 1994), Quality of Working Life and Democratization in Latin America (EID,1991). A poetry book “Refracciones Itinerantes” (Uppsala, 2010) – and currently in press with a second and enlarged edition, Fondo Editorial, UNALM, Perú (2017) In Press.