Why the EU president is a man of few syllables

TO MOST Brits, Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council, is perhaps best known as the man who UKIP leader Nigel Farage once said had ‘all the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk’. But that is to sell him short. Because Mr Van Rompuy is also a poet.

The senior EU official, has recently published his second volume of Haiku poems, imaginatively called Haiku 2. The first volume Haiku was published in 2010.

A haiku is a traditional Japanese poem made up of 17 syllables, divided into three lines. The first line should consist of five syllables, the second seven and the third five.

The pinstripe-suit-wearing Van Rompuy has written about his devotion to his office — ‘Wrapped in my work/all the while the wheat is growing/ever taller’ — and of the joys of gazing on the EU flag: ‘A wreath of stars/surging on a blue sea/ united forever.’

If you’re counting syllables, you may notice that the strict 5-7-5 has been lost. This is because the haikus were originally written in the poet’s native Dutch and subsequently translated into English, and this being the EU, into French and German too. There’s even a Japanese translation included in the book for purists.

Sadly for Mr Van Rompuy, when the poems were presented to Kai Falkman, head of the World Haiku Association, the verdict was distinctly tepid.

‘They are not terribly outstanding,’ said Mr Falkman.