Haiku by a former UN General Secretary

Dag Hammarskjöld was born in 1905. The youngest of four brothers, he was by far the most academic son to his father, a former Education Minister of Sweden and Govenor of Uppsala. Hammarskjöld is internationally known as the Swedish Secretary General of the UN 1953-1961, although he had a number of posts in Swedish public life, as a civil servant of the national bank and the cabinet. He died in 1961, after the aeroplane of which he was a passenger, was shot down over the Congo. 

After his death 110 short poems, mainly aphorisms and philosophical thoughts where published, amongst them also some haiku. This is a bit peculiar as the haiku form was not very well know in the US in the 1950s, and even less so in Sweden.  Another curious thing about Hammarskjölds haiku is that they are written in the past tense. Hammarskjöld was born 106 years ago, yet his haiku feel very contemporary, dispite their quirks of obsolete grammatical forms, such as "slöto". 


I slottets skugga                               In the castle shadow
slöto sig blommorna                        the flowers closed
långt före aftonen                            long before the evening


Hammarskjöld loved nature and was a highly spiritual person. His philosophy on ethics and social justice prevails through the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. He was reputedly a reserved, compliated man, said to have an extremely high work ethic. He never married or had a family of his own. His estate, a traditional and modest Swedish farmhouse in Backåkra, with its amazing nature, perched on the shore of the Baltic sea, says something about the man he was. 


Ännu långt från stranden               Still far from the beach
lekte havets friskhet                       the sea's freshness played
i bronsblanka löv                            in bronze-shining leaves


In 2006  Swedish diplomat and haiku-poet Kai Falkman, who had been lecturing on Dag Hammarskjöld, edited a book explaining these haiku and putting them together with previously unpublished photographs, taken by Hammarskjöld himself;
A String Untouched - Dag Hammarskjöld's life in haiku and photographs.


www.daghammarskjold.se
www.dhf.uu.se