Fuyu-zare ya
Tani no yuri iki hisome
No wa hadaka

(Georges C. Friedenkraft (France)

Translation by Uchida:

Scarcely clothed in glass
Stealthy lily of the vale
Fleeting naked

The author is a biologist. The way that he writes of the lily in the vale is effective in conveying a sense of precariousness and ephemerality. He may have been recalling “Le Lys dans la Vallée,” a story by the French novelist Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)


Fuyu kodachi
Fukkura-suzume no
Hana ga saku

Ayako Mizuno (Aichi Prefecture, Japan)

Translation by herself:

Puffy sparrows
Like blossoms on a
Bare winter tree

Sparrows in a winter, curled up and with their feathers ruffled, have a bloated appearance. This was expressed in a well-known verse by J. W. Hacket as “without any necks,” and Kawabata Boosha described them as looking as if they might “bounce upon the ground.” The author of this verse has depicted the sparrows in a naïve and romantic way.