A Walk about with Matsuo (1644-94)

botan shibe/ fukaku wakeizuru hachi no/ nagori kana

How slow it lets
a bee emerge from its pistils' depths
- the peony

(line 2 is the second longest line in Basho, 11 instead of 7 syllables)

shizukasa ya/ iwa ni shimiiru/ semi no koe

how still: singing into the stones, the cicada's trill

(the scene is a mountain temple)

kareeda ni/ karasu no tomari keri/ aki no kure

On dead branches
the crows remain
perched at autumn's end

(considered Basho's first masterpiece - 1681 - and the poem that inspired
Imagism including Pound's 'In a Station of the Metro' - 1914 - & Wallace
Stevens' '13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird' - 1917. 'karasu' is an ominous
bird, variously translated as crow, rook, blackbird, raven.)

natsukusa ya/ tsuwamonodomo ga/ yume no ato

summer
grasses over with weeds the battlefields of dead
soldiers' dreams

(written at Takadachi Castle where Lord Yoshitune fought valiantly but
vainly against his brother's army. The pattern of vowels, its ahs and ohs,
only one e, is worth emphasising: a-u-u-a-a/ u-a--o-o-o-o-a/ u-e-o-a-o)

shimajima ya/ chiji ni kudakete/ natsu no umi

Islands: shattered into a thousand pieces in the summer sea

umi kurete/ kamo no koe/ honoka ni shiroshi

The waters fade
          and the wild ducks' cries
                     are faintly white

rakagaki ni/ koishiki kimi ga/ na mo arite

Among these graffiti is the name of someone I love

(or)

on the toilet wall
I read the name
of you, my love, of you


The above translations are by various hands and variously 'doctored' by me.
The 'notes' are adapted from F.Bowers 'The Classic Tradition of Haiku'
(1996).
Basho - the most common pen-name of the poet (it means banana or plantain
plant) - would not have recognised the term haiku which only became widely
used in the 19th century. He commonly wrote haikai no renga in sequences of
up to 36 strophes or stand alone hokku interspersed with prose, as in 'The
Narrow Road to the Deep North'. Designated a god
in the Shinto pantheon, Basho developed an art which moved away from the
confines of the aristocratic and linguistically purist waka/ tanka
traditions of the courtly 'gods' into the language of the (Sinified)
marketplace. It simultaneously emphasised the comic, the common, the
mystical moment of perception and the person-hood of voice. The last piece
included, with thanks to the Princeton, is an English only version of a
collaboration of Basho with Enomoto Kikaku - 'Poetry is What I Sell' (1682):

Horses may neigh at dawn like cocks
announcing freshly fallen snow
      poetry is what I sell
flowers not my debts concern me
      so I drink all the time

      Poetry is what we sell
flowers not debts concern us
      so we drink all the time
as the sun sets on THE SPINGTIME LAKE
AND PLEASURE HAS BROUGHT
HOME OUR POEM

(the capitals represent Japanese treated as Chinese)

All the Best

Dave


David Bircumshaw

Spectare's Web, A Chide's Alphabet
& Painting Without Numbers

http://www.chidesalphabet.org.uk


----- Original Message -----
From: "mallin1" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004 7:03 PM
Subject: Re: Mr. Banana (was re: more poems)


Dear David, Patrick and Jesse

Thanks so much for your informed and thoughtful writings on the haiku. I am
learning a lot.

Rupert