EU president Van Rompuy exchanges haiku with Japan’s Abe
EU president Herman Van Rompuy, a devotee of all things Japanese, welcomed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday with a traditional "haiku" mini-poem. Abe responded in kind, referring to a dinner hosted on Tuesday by Van Rompuy at an ancient chateau.
EU president Herman Van Rompuy, a devotee of all things Japanese, welcomed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday with a traditional "haiku" mini-poem.
"Once come May spring ushers in life everywhere. Laughing blossoms," Van Rompuy told Abe, who was wrapping up a six-country, nine-day Europe visit with a European Union summit.
Once come May spring ushers in life everywhere. Laughing blossoms
Abe responded in kind, referring to a dinner hosted on Tuesday by Van Rompuy at an ancient chateau. "Lovely spring evening," he said through a Japanese interpreter. "How deeply do I appreciate the hospitality at an old castle."
Van Rompuy has been composing haikus, poems of delicacy and allusion based on 17 syllables in the strict Japanese style, for years. "Between poetry and politics I do not see many links," Van Rompuy said at the 2010 launch of a book of his haikus. "A haiku-poet, in politics, cannot be extravagant, nor super-vain, nor extremist."
Van Rompuy met Abe against the backdrop of the Ukraine crisis and complex negotiations on a massive free-trade agreement with Tokyo.