Haiku by Matthew Burkett
nendaspu stabeg
they told me to keep real still
praareien
May 2024 Creative Corner prompt response, published with the author's permission. Copyright © 2024 story by Matthew Burkett. Sign up for our newsletter for a chance to be featured on our blog, Pensieri.
The haiku includes two lines culled from a stele located in the Museo Civico Castello Ursino, which contains an inscription in what is thought to be the Sikel language, an ancient and possibly indiginous language endemic to what is now Sicily. The language is--I'm not expert in the field--as yet undeciphered, with relatively few surviving examples. For the haiku I was content to transcribe the letters of the stele's script without knowing meaning, inserting a middle line in English that not so much interprets what they might be as much as comments on their perseverance, hinting at the island's violent colonial histories.
Matthew Burkett lives in Chicago and is writing his doctoral dissertation in English.