Ekimian Suwnghen 1 by @fragmented_imagination (B Sanders)

Shiav ūm kvādh anne bhezh aidh.
Redhíshū mā bīkíxī. Kiam dex bīxī?
Kiam dwe kxai ābtev.

"Rain on a window of grey night.
"Destination is not known. Do they know?
"They travel with me."

An example of poetry in one of my conlangs. The language is Batum, found here, written in a cursive style based on experiments with handwriting (which I may post later). The style of poem is called a "sūnghen" or a "suwnghen", otherwise colloquially called an Ekimian haiku. Of course, it does not have much in common with a haiku other than being a short poem. A sūnghen is a three-line poem composed according to word count rather than syllable count. The first two lines consist of two three- to five-word phrases (either two separate statements or a whole statement for the whole line) with each phrase ending in a loose rhyme. Because Batum only has four basic vowels, a "rhyme" in this case can be as small as a matching consonant (the "dh" in the rhymes of the first line) or the whole syllable (the "xī" syllables of the second line). The third line never rhymes and cannot exceed the number of words of the line before it (in this case, the maximum word count for this poem would be six but could go up to eight or ten if the rhymes were longer).

I came up with this because I wanted to submit something for March since I did not have a tanka for February. With the rains coming in on where I live lately, I thought a contemplative poem about the rain would be nice. And I wanted to try my hand at messing around with the oekaki a bit as well as develop a style of literature for one of my conlangs. I think I like the style. The image, on the other hand, could probably use some more work. It being past midnight here probably didn't help with my focus. I think I'm going to go to sleep now.

© 2023 B Sanders