Preface
Over the last 25 years of her life, Lydia worked on a set of poems she called her “haikus”. She knew of course that not all were in the precise form of the strict Japanese verse and this kept her rewriting and reworking the lines. In her last years, she worked less on her haikus but every night from 1996 to the Spring of 1998 she would draw a doodle expressing her feelings and moods at the end of the day. We had often discussed the idea of putting some of her “haikus” together with an appropriate doodle. When it became clear that this might become a dream never realized, I put a small book together with the help of Lydia’s closest friends. We complete this in time to show Lydia a few months before she passed away. Her smile told us she was deeply delighted. Lydia died in Switzerland, August 1998 at the age of 92.These poems reveal a part of Lydia that she did not outwardly divulge and that no one really knew: sometimes mercilessly honest, sometimes tortured and exposing her innermost wounds, always utterly genuine. I would like to share these with you as a record of one woman’s inner soul, with my deep respects for a very creative woman.
Roy Freeman, October 2003/2016