Eleven Horseman

Kobayashi Kiyochika

Eleven horsemen riding through a night
Of swirling snow: none looks to left or right.

Shiki

fr. A Net of Fireflies
translated by Harold Stewart

Fifteen words - !

Fifteen words containing endless possibiities.

Through Morning Mist

 

Through morning mist, preceded by its moo,
The lowing cow looms slowly into view.

Issa

fr. A Net of Fireflies
translated by Harold Stewart

See?

There's a poem for everything.

Evening Snow

     

Evening snowfall, with the faint dry crunch
Of straw that stable horses twist and munch.

Kyukoko

fr. A Net of Fireflies
translated by Harold Stewart

Snowfall - one of my favourite things. The translation of this haiku might not be the best, but the image and the subject matter still do it for me. It intrigues me how something cold can also give off such a quality of warmth - of covering and insulating. How that works I don't know.

Ash-smothered Coals

Ash-smothered coals: and now at last it's hot,
The soup that simmers in the hermit's pot.

Buson

 
fr. A Net of Fireflies
translated by Harod Stewart

 

We had a campfire the other night. I was mesmerized by the glowing coals, as always. What is it about fire that draws us? More than its warmth, is it that it so often means food? And perhaps even music, and stories? 

It came to me that maybe the haiku is like its subject - that the words become a kind of fire in the mind. A few good words, like a few coals, are enough to warm and feed us. Enough to draw us mesmerized and dreamlike around it.

 

The Iris

Unknown

The iris standing in the marsh - so blue,

Its roots have drunk the sky's reflected hue.

HO-O

fr. A Net of Fireflies

translated by Harold Stewart

Pretty hard to add to that. And that's the thing about haiku - the distillation of so many thoughts. Packing the maximum punch into each word. Lovely, isn't it? The roots drinking up the reflected blue? . 
 
   

A Seedling

Benoit Trimborn

A seedling shoulders up some crumbs of ground:

The fields are suddenly green for miles around.

HO-O

fr. A Net of Fireflies

translated by Harold Stewart

Sneaky spring. She did it again.

Winter Storm

Aleksey Zuev

winter storm:

the peering cat

squints and blinks

Yaso

from Snow Falling From a Bamboo Leaf: The Art of Haiku

by Hiag Akmakjian

There’s something about a cat. A cat sitting in a window, watching the world, observing each detail. The stillness of a cat, alert but relaxed.  Like in the poem "Pax" ,by D.H. Lawrence, where the cat embodies a sense of belonging. It slips into place, and rests. How I admire that! To watch and rest until the time for action? To not be anxious or tense? To be one's self and trust. How beautiful. 

November Night

Kelly Sereda

November Night

Listen. .

With faint dry sound,

Like steps of passing ghosts,

The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees

And fall.

Adelaide Crapsey

What could I possibly add to that?

Leaves

Kaii Higashiyama

Leaves

The winds that blow -

  ask them, which leaf of the tree

   will be next to go?

Soseki

Yesterday I was driving down a mapled street as a gust of wind kicked up. Suddenly I was in a storm of swirling, flaming leaves. They struck at the windshield from all directions, skidded across the road in front of me, made little leaf-cyclones along the avenue. It gave me the sense of an event, as if on my way home I had come upon a street festival or a riot, people laughing and crowding, pushing me along, jostling me in their enthusiasm. When the wind died down, it was as if something had happened to me. I was unsettled, elated. Coming around the corner I had caught a glimpse of a drama unfolding; as if I were a character walking into a scene of a story I had not known I was part of.

Firefly Haiku

Mikiko Noji

Come! Come! I call.

But the fireflies

Flash away into the darkness.

Onitsura

There is something so wistful about this poem. Here we are, reaching for something beautiful even as it disappears. I don't know of any tradition other than Japanese haiku that conveys such depth of feeling without making any mention of it. I don't understand how they do it. Nature speaks. Silence and absence become an oratorical device. And this is only the translated form. Can you imagine what it must be like in it's original language? Think of all the nuances, the cultural imagery that has been lost in translation, and yet, such exquisite tracery remains. If poetry is a distillation of language and meaning, I can't help but think maybe haiku is one of its highest forms. To say the most with the least? Surely that is difficult above all. 

The Skylark

Steven Outram

The Skylark

A song alone

comes down - and of the skylark

the last trace is gone.

Ampu

from "An Introduction to Haiku: an anthology of poems and poets from Basho to Shiki" by Harold G. Henderson

 Haiku only seems simple. I know almost nothing about the tradition, but from the little that I’ve read I’ve learned that most significant thing of all - I know almost nothing. In the sense that there are worlds of expression to explore yet. For one thing, that a poem’s art might be in what is not said, or what is there but not said – that’s more what I mean. And the Japanese poets are dedicated students of this. It’s not merely distillation of a thought, it’s getting to that level of writing where each word is a door swinging open to a new place. When it comes to poetry, how many words are enough? Is it possible that what our words have lost is a sense of silence, of falling into depths beyond words? When I read this haiku – a translation, it’s important to remember (a thousand subtleties have been lost) – I hear so many different notes. Loss, loneliness, the song (what is that song - what does it signify?), the element of nature, nature as a foil for human destinies, the qualities of the skylark – the symbolic nature of the bird. And this is without knowing any of the cultural language code being employed. I know so little. I know beauty, though, when I hear it.