The melancoly of the poetry by Dumitru D.lfrim
 

The melancholy, love, flight, light are the favourite subjects in the Dumitru D. Ifrim's poetry. Like in a gliding musical armony, these themes are recovering through each other, reaching themselves to one another book. These themes are found in all his books, in the haiku books published and in the ones left in the manuscript, too. The melancholy of the love, or the light of the solitude can definite his poetry.

The first book by Dumitru D. Ifrim published in 1983¹ is named A fugue of the Melancholy. A composition, of the soul's image. A book about the love and loneliness. On the first page of the book, this line~ III am what I will be when I'll leave my body.!1 The flight that liberates the body from the earth. The melancholy and the solitude of this flight. The melancholy as the passing time. Sabi. The light that is setting in the things:

Or what Dumitru D. Ifrim has written in other poem:

I should want to get away from my body

to approach lightly toward you

like a melancholy -

In the Ko magazine, autumn-winter 2006 issue, PJavid Burleigh, poet and essay-writer, who dedicates a page" In memory of Dumitru D. Ifrim writes:

"The name of Clelia and Dumitru D. Ifrim, our valued contributors from Bucharest, are familiar to readers of this publication. ( ... ) The haiku that come to us from Eastern Europe often have a distinct flavour that distinguishes them from haiku composed in other places."

This flavour about David Burleigh is speaking is just this melancholy, this longing of heart. In haiku by Dumitru D. Ifrim we can find it as a sabi, the passing light of the time and its mark. The nostalgia, wishfulness that is setting in the beings and things. Light of this mark. The sadness of the beings and things, and their passing.

David Burleight chooses two haiku by Dumitru D. Ifrim on this theme. One of them is named jisei-ku, parting haiku.

More and more
the flute of a Corydon ­
lost sheep for eve

The sound that saves. The sound as a light. The sound that is coming from the ancient times, from the beginning of the world. The light that is setting on the passing things, like the passing wave is set in the next wave.

What is melancholy ? You can find it in many haiku written by Dumitru D. Ifrim. It can be the sound of the silence from this haiku:

A bell on the shore -
waves carry in the offing
a profound silence.²

The melancholy can be also the loneliness of the love like in this haiku
The deserted room ­
love took with it
even the walls ³

On the internet site Haiga gallery, Kuniharu Shimuzu makes after this haiku by Dumitru D. Ifrim, a haiga, representing a close room, a cube, that is shattering. From it, a mark a love flying. A breath of wind. A light wind.
   
Another haiku by Dumitru D. Ifrim, chosen by Kuniharu Shimizu is following one:

The crystal clear night ...⁴
The pearl-diver in the depth
by the naked moon

I know that Dumitru D. Ifrim loved very much this haiku. On the same internet site Kuniharu Shimizu makes after it a painting in which you will find a transparent being, a lunar being, a subliminal woman. Just a fluent light, a modulating wave of light.

From "The Melancholy" by Durer, an engravmg from1514, that Dumitru D. Ifrim has chosen as a cover for his poetry book. "The plumb line," published in 2004, to this white-blue being of a peral-diver, to this virtual being on the internet, there is the same world of melancholy, the same world of the passing light. The time means the light set in the beings and things. The light, from the sunlight to the fire of fireflies. The loneliness of the poets.
And a mark that will have been
to remember
a sense
dir="ltr">
It is a fragment of a poetry from the book Graviora forte by Dumitru D. Ifrim published in 2002. The same theme of melancholy. The passing of the time and its mark. All is simple. Purity simplicity. Simple beauty. No show. The essence exists by itself. It is natural. It need not of publicity.

Wabi and sabi, both of them, have the syllable bi, the light. The light from the fire to the stars. The essence of the loneliness. The light as a melancholy. Its mark. To find the place where the breath of wind, the breath of light enters the body, infiltrates into it.

To recognize the passing light, the fluidity of time. To recognize these marks like in this haiku by Dumitru D. Ifrim, published in Ko magazine, autumn-winter 2006/2007

The leaves are turning

otherwise toward the light -

marks of the autumn.
And what is a sign ? Sometimes a mark on the sand. Other times a mark in the wind. Many times not even it. It is washed by the water. It is wiped away by the wind. The nothing, as a melancholy. The condition of emptiness. The existence through the emptiness. The emptiness that a wounded she-deer left behind, like in this haiku:

Wounded by bullet⁵
a deer continues her jump­
sunset of winterdir="ltr">
To pass.

To pass through the sunset twilight. The sunset, this hour of the melancholy.

What you can find, reading an image at twilight ? The jump of a deer, but also "the twilight fancy work 'seen by the poet, by a dreamer. To dream, to allow yourself to be included in the silence of the sunset, in the quiet that follows it.

The twilight fancy-work is⁶ another haiku book by Dumitru D. Ifrini, Romanian, English, French edition, with drawings by Niji Fuyuno.

A touch of flight-

the seagull gives me something

from the open sea

The melancholy of the sea. The longing to leave.

 What is the melancholy?

A book. A book as a life. A passing life. But, otherwise.

Shadow and light⁷ is the last book published by Dumitru D. Ifrim in his life time. He was happy to see it published, to keep it in his hand, to write an autograph, the last, to the painter who had come to see him. It is a haiku anthology. About it, haiku poet and cinema critic Ryu Yotsuya says: 'These haiku, these meditations about light and shadow look like diamonds reflecting Dumitru 's thought.

Shadow and light. Passing shadows that always go toward the light. Shadows who pass all the frontiers for this light. Last passing. Last frontier. The unseen mark, the flight that is continuing in the unknown place. The flight. Only the The flight. Only the ones who have learnt to fly on this earth, can live it.


1 Albatross publishing house, Bucharest.
2 Ko magazine, spring-summer 2005
3 World Haiku, Kodansha International, 1996.
4 Excellence Prize, Itoen new haiku ,1995
5 Iga-cho town prize, 2002
6 Lumina Lex, publishing house 2000
7 National Museum ofPomanian Lierature publising house, 2005