TWO HUNDRED SELECTED HAIKU MATSUO
MATSUO BASHO - Translated by Dr Tim Chilcott. UK: @http://www.tclt.org.uk
Dear friends,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY LITTLE BROTHER and UNA ! Wishing you a wonderful day.
It is an immense pleasure to return to Basho. I think I have figured it out, although the format is not perfect, as the test post and Lenny’s comment show us. But I miss having Basho to look at during the week. Yes, I thought I had scheduled it for yesterday, but I hadn’t. We are starting where we left off. Confession: I haven't committed any poems to memory yet, but I am starting today. Spring is in the air, and I am just back from the beach. It is cold in Dublin, but as the sun warms up, you feel like sitting down on a bench and lifting your head up like a lizard. Even though I did not experience winter in Dublin, everyone tells me that it is colder now than during the worst months of winter. I did not escape it. So let’s indulge ourselves and have double the poems for this week. At least three have to be memorised, and once we return to three, at least one. Is that a fair pledge?
4
[1668-9]
nami no hana to / yuki mo ya mizu no / kaeribana
[wave's blossom as / snow also? water's / returning-flower] NOTE
the waves blossoming...
has snow returned to water,
flowered out of season?Note: The phrase nami no hana refers to the caps of waves that look like white blossoms. Kaeribana literally means 'returning flower', and here refers to a flower that blooms out of
5
[1672]
kumo to hadatsu / tomo ka ya kari no / ikiwakare NOTE
[cloud as separate / friend ! goose's / living-separation]
as clouds drift apart
a wild goose now separates
from his only friend
Note:The term kari can indicate both 'wild goose' and 'temporary', a dual meaning explained by the fact that wild geese are migrant birds, leaving Japan in spring and returning in autumn. The first phrase kumo to hedatsu has also been read as 'separated by clouds' or "beyond the clouds'.
6
[1679]
sokai no / nami sake kusashi / kyo no tsuki NOTE
[blue-sea's / wave rice-wine smell / today's moon]
on a sea of blue,
the waves fragrant with rice-wine,
this moon as wine-cup
Note: Tsuki can mean 'wine cup' as well as 'moon', hence the apposition of 'this moon as wine-cup'
7
[1680-1]
Feelings on a cold night in Fukagawa
ro no koe nami o utte / harawata koru / yo ya namida NOTE
[oar's voice waves [acc.] hitting / bowels freeze / night! tears]
the squeak of the oars slapping on the waves,
a bowel-freezing night...
and then the cryingNote: A markedly irregular haiku, not only in its metre (the first line has
10 syllables rather than 5, the second 6 rather than 7), but also in its unusual placing of the 'cutting word' ya in the last line. The phrase ro no koe, too, may refer either to the sound the oar makes in the oarlocks, or to the sound it makes as it dips into the water. The version here follows the unusual syllabic pattern exactly, as well as evoking both the sounds that the oar makes ('the squeak of the oars slapping on the waves').
8
[1681]
kareeda ni / karasu no tomarikeri / aki no kure
[withered-branch on / crow's is-perched / autumn's evening]
on a withered branch
a crow perches and settles:
evening in autumn 9
[1681]
yügao no / shiroku yoru no koka ni / shisoku torite
[evening-face (nom.) / white night's outhouse on / candle hold]
the moonflowers are white
in the night by the outhouse,
candle in my handUntil next time,
Bee well,
Xanda
Thank you, as always, for sharing these, Xanda. I love #5, above, with its suggestive Buddhist elements. Clouds form; they are but temporary and must dissipate (one way or the other). The "goose" can represent any of us, and the "best friend" and "separation" may imply that ultimately we must lose all our attachments. That the gooses depart in spring and return in autumn may hint at a theme of reincarnation, while *kumo to hedatsu* may indeed allude to "beyond the clouds" in the sense of beyond the Veil of Illusion.