Reading Klaus-Dieter Wirth’s Voices of Stones feels a bit like stepping into a quiet room and realizing it’s not empty. There’s something alive in the stillness—something worth paying attention to. His poems, mostly haiku and senryū, don’t try to impress or explain. They just wait for you to notice them. And once you do, they linger.
Wirth follows in the footsteps of Japanese haiku masters like Bashō and Buson, finding entire worlds in just a few lines. But there’s something different in his voice—something a little more vulnerable, a little more human. His work lives in the overlap between nature and people, between the things we see and the things we feel but can’t quite name.
Where the Quiet Lives
A lot of Wirth’s haiku feel like the moment after something happens—when the air hasn’t quite settled yet. He plays with ma, the Japanese idea of the space between things. In his poems, that space holds weight. It’s not empty; it’s alive.
Like this one:
tentacles of shadow
on the fresh blanket of snow
the old maple
It’s simple, but it gets under your skin. You can almost feel the cold, see the shadows stretch. The tree says nothing, but somehow it says everything—about time passing, about staying still, about just being.
Not all silence is peaceful, though. Sometimes it hums with what just happened:
jet fighters
having passed by
the roar of silence
That last line punches harder than the jets themselves. It’s not just quiet—it’s the kind of silence that rings in your chest. A silence full of memory, or maybe regret. Wirth doesn’t explain it. He just lets you stand there and feel it.
A Smile That Stays
While his haiku lean into nature and stillness, his senryū turn toward people—with all our messiness and weird little moments. Senryū traditionally go for humor, and Wirth has a light touch. But there’s heart behind the jokes.
young dad
pushing the pram with his kid
both of them bald
It’s funny, sure. But it’s also tender. There’s a kind of quiet symmetry there—one at the beginning of life, one somewhere in the middle, just walking side by side. You smile, and then you maybe think about your own dad. Or your kid. Or yourself.
And then there’s this:
after the funeral
some steps slower
others quicker
If you’ve ever lost someone, this hits home. Everyone reacts differently—some people linger, some can’t wait to leave. Wirth doesn’t try to say what’s right. He just shows you the moment and lets you find your own way into it.
The Beauty of Wear and Tear
Wirth writes about things that are worn out, rusted, cracked—but not broken. His poems feel rooted in wabi-sabi, the Japanese idea that imperfection is part of beauty.
rusty pontoon
salmons leaping upstream
towards fall
The salmon aren’t symbols. They’re just doing what they do—fighting upstream even as the season’s turning. Even as the pontoon rusts. There’s something deeply human in that kind of persistence.
At the end of the day, Voices of Stones doesn’t shout. It whispers. It makes space for what we usually rush past—a shift in light, a shared smile, a silence that feels like it means something. These poems don’t need to be interpreted. They just ask you to notice.
In a world that moves fast and talks loud, Wirth gives us permission to pause. To listen. To let things be. And sometimes, that’s where the meaning is—not in what’s said, but in what’s left behind.
—-
You can read the entire book in the THF Digital Library. Please share your favorite poem from the book with us.
Essays, Art and Plays by Dan 
Leave a comment