Chen-ou Liu's Translation Project: First English-Chinese Haiku and Tanka Blog

Saturday, February 19, 2011

A Haiku about Politics

the glow
on facecrime suspect's face...
low-hanging cold moon


World Kigo Database (George Orwell)

Note: Facecrime is described in the following passage from Part 1, Chapter 5 of 1984:

It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself -- anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.