Japanese haiku about nature. I meet two poets: father and son
Japan is a country with a very ancient and unique culture. There is perhaps no other literary genre that expresses the Japanese national spirit as much as haiku does.
Haiku (haiku) is a lyrical poem characterized by extreme brevity and unique poetics. It depicts the life of nature and human life against the backdrop of the cycle of seasons.
In Japan, haiku were not simply invented by someone, but were the product of a centuries-old historical literary and poetic process. Until the 7th century, Japanese poetry was dominated by long poems - “nagauta”. In the 7th-8th centuries, the legislator of Japanese literary poetry, supplanting them, became the five-line “tanka” (literally “short song”), not yet divided into stanzas. Later, tanka began to be clearly divided into tercet and couplet, but haiku did not yet exist. In the 12th century, chain verses "renga" (literally "strung stanzas") appeared, consisting of alternating tercets and couplets. Their first tercise was called the "initial stanza" or "haiku", but did not exist independently. It was only in the 14th century that renga reached its peak. The opening stanza was usually the best in its composition, and collections of exemplary haiku appeared, which became a popular form of poetry. But it was only in the second half of the 17th century that haiku as an independent phenomenon became firmly established in Japanese literature.
Japanese poetry is syllabic, that is, its rhythm is based on the alternation of a certain number of syllables. There is no rhyme: the sound and rhythmic organization of the tercet is a subject of great concern to Japanese poets.
Hundreds, thousands of poets have been and continue to be interested in the addition of haiku. Among these countless names, four great names are now known throughout the world: Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), Yosa Buson (1716-1783), Kobayashi Issa (1769-1827) and Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902). These poets traveled far and wide to the Land of the Rising Sun. We found the most beautiful corners in the depths of the mountains, on the sea coast and sang them in poetry. They put all the heat of their hearts into a few syllables of haiku. The reader will open the book - and as if with his own eyes he will see the green mountains of Yoshino, the surf waves in Suma Bay will rustle in the wind. The pine trees in Suminoe will sing a sad song.
Haiku has a stable meter. Each verse has a certain number of syllables: five in the first, seven in the second and five in the third - a total of seventeen syllables. This does not exclude poetic license, especially among such bold and innovative poets as Matsuo Basho. He sometimes did not take into account the meter, striving to achieve the greatest poetic expressiveness.
The dimensions of haiku are so small that in comparison with it a European sonnet seems like a large poem. It contains only a few words, and yet its capacity is relatively large. The art of writing haiku is, first of all, the ability to say a lot in a few words.
Brevity makes haiku similar to folk proverbs. Some tercets have gained currency in popular speech as proverbs, such as the poem by Basho:
I'll say the word -
Lips freeze.
Autumn whirlwind!
As a proverb, it means that “caution sometimes makes one remain silent.” But most often, haiku differs from a proverb in its genre characteristics. This is not an edifying saying, a short parable or a well-aimed wit, but a poetic picture sketched in one or two strokes. The poet’s task is to infect the reader with lyrical excitement, to awaken his imagination, and for this it is not necessary to paint a picture in all its details.
You cannot skim through a collection of haiku, flipping through page after page. If the reader is passive and not attentive enough, he will not perceive the impulse sent to him by the poet. Japanese poetics takes into account the counter-work of the reader's thoughts. Thus, the blow of the bow and the response of the string trembling together give birth to music.
Haiku is small in size, but this does not detract from the poetic or philosophical meaning that a poet is able to give to it, nor does it limit the scope of his thoughts. However, the poet, of course, cannot give a multifaceted image and at length, to fully develop his thought within the framework of haiku. In every phenomenon he seeks only its culmination.
Giving preference to the small, haiku sometimes painted a picture of a large scale:
On a high embankment there are pine trees,
And between them the cherries are visible, and the palace
In the depths of flowering trees...
In three lines of Basho's poem there are three perspectives.
Haiku is akin to the art of painting. They were often painted on the subjects of paintings and, in turn, inspired artists; sometimes they turned into a component of the painting in the form of a calligraphic inscription on it. Sometimes poets resorted to methods of depiction akin to the art of painting. This is, for example, Buson’s tercet:
Crescent flowers around.
The sun is going out in the west.
The moon is rising in the east.
Wide fields are covered with yellow colza flowers, they seem especially bright in the sunset. The pale moon rising in the east contrasts with the fiery ball of the setting sun. The poet does not tell us in detail what kind of lighting effect is created, what colors are on his palette. He only offers a new look at the picture that everyone has seen, perhaps, dozens of times... Grouping and selection of pictorial details is the main task of the poet. He has only two or three arrows in his quiver: not one should fly past.
Haiku is a little magical picture. It can be compared to a landscape sketch. You can paint a huge landscape on canvas, carefully drawing the picture, or you can sketch a tree bent by the wind and rain with a few strokes. This is how the Japanese poet does it, he “draws”, outlining in a few words what we ourselves must imagine, complete in our imagination. Very often, haiku authors made illustrations for their poems.
Often the poet creates not visual, but sound images. The howl of the wind, the chirping of cicadas, the cries of a pheasant, the singing of a nightingale and a lark, the voice of a cuckoo - each sound is filled with a special meaning, giving rise to certain moods and feelings.
The lark sings
with a stinking blow in the thicket
The pheasant echoes him. (Buson)
The Japanese poet does not unfold before the reader the entire panorama of possible ideas and associations that arise in connection with a given object or phenomenon. It only awakens the reader’s thought and gives it a certain direction.
On a bare branch
Raven sits alone.
Autumn evening. (Basho)
The poem looks like a monochrome ink drawing.
There is nothing superfluous here, everything is extremely simple. With the help of a few skillfully chosen details, a picture of late autumn is created. You can feel the absence of wind, nature seems frozen in sad stillness. The poetic image, it would seem, is slightly outlined, but it has great capacity and, bewitching, leads you along. The poet depicted a real landscape and, through it, his state of mind. He is not talking about the raven’s loneliness, but about his own.
It is quite understandable that there is some confusion in haiku. The poem consists of only three verses. Each verse is very short. Most often, a verse has two meaningful words, not counting formal elements and exclamatory particles. All excess is wrung out and eliminated; there is nothing left that serves only for decoration. The means of poetic speech are selected extremely sparingly: haiku avoids epithet or metaphor if it can do without them. Sometimes the entire haiku is an extended metaphor, but its direct meaning is usually hidden in the subtext.
From the heart of a peony
A bee slowly crawls out...
Oh, with what reluctance!
Basho composed this poem while leaving the hospitable home of his friend. It would be a mistake, however, to look for such a double meaning in every haiku. Most often, haiku is a concrete image of the real world that does not require or allow any other interpretation.
Haiku teaches you to look for hidden beauty in the simple, inconspicuous, everyday. Not only the famous, many times sung cherry blossoms are beautiful, but also the modest, invisible at first glance, flowers of colza and shepherd's purse.
Take a close look!
Shepherd's purse flowers
You will see under the fence. (Basho)
In another poem by Basho, the face of a fisherman at dawn resembles a blooming poppy, and both are equally beautiful. Beauty can strike like lightning:
I've barely gotten around to it
Exhausted, until the night...
And suddenly - wisteria flowers! (Basho)
Beauty can be deeply hidden. The feeling of beauty in nature and in human life is akin to a sudden comprehension of the truth, the eternal principle, which, according to Buddhist teaching, is invisibly present in all phenomena of existence. In haiku we find a new rethinking of this truth - the affirmation of beauty in the unnoticed, ordinary:
They scare them and drive them out of the fields!
The sparrows will fly up and hide
Under the protection of tea bushes. (Basho)Trembling on the horse's tail
Spring webs...
Tavern at noon. (Izen)
In Japanese poetry, haiku are always symbolic, always filled with deep feeling and philosophical content. Each line carries a high semantic load.
How the autumn wind whistles!
Then only you will understand my poems,
When you spend the night in the field. (Matsuo Basho)Throw a stone at me!
Cherry blossom branch
I'm broke now. (Chikarai Kikaku, student of Basho)Not one of the ordinary people
The one who attracts
Tree without flowers. (Onitsura)The moon has come out
And every small bush
Invited to the celebration. (Kobaasi Issa)
Deep meaning, passionate appeal, emotional intensity in these short lines and necessarily the dynamics of thought or feeling!
When writing haiku, the poet must have mentioned what time of year he was talking about. And haiku collections were also usually divided into four chapters: “Spring”, “Summer”, “Autumn”, “Winter”. If you carefully read the tercet, you can always find a “seasonal” word in it. For example, about melt water, about plum and cherry blossoms, about the first swallows, about the nightingale. Singing frogs are spoken of in spring poems; about cicadas, about the cuckoo, about green grass, about lush peonies - in summer; about chrysanthemums, about scarlet maple leaves, about the sad trills of a cricket - in autumn; about bare groves, about cold wind, about snow, about frost - in winter. But haiku talks about more than just flowers, birds, wind and the moon. Here is a peasant planting rice in a flooded field, here are travelers coming to admire the snow cap on the sacred Mount Fuji. There is so much Japanese life here - both everyday and festive. One of the most revered holidays among the Japanese is the cherry blossom festival. Its branch is a symbol of Japan. When the cherry blossoms, everyone, young and old, whole families, friends and loved ones gather in gardens and parks to admire the pink and white clouds of delicate petals. This is one of the oldest Japanese traditions. They carefully prepare for this spectacle. To choose a good place, you sometimes need to arrive a day earlier. The Japanese tend to celebrate cherry blossoms twice: with colleagues and with family. In the first case, it is a sacred duty that is not violated by anyone, in the second, it is true pleasure. Contemplation of cherry blossoms has a beneficial effect on a person, puts one in a philosophical mood, causes admiration, joy, and peace.
The haiku of the poet Issa are both lyrical and ironic:
In my native country
Cherry blossoms bloom
And there is grass in the fields!“Cherry trees, cherry blossoms!” -
And about these old trees
Once upon a time they sang...It's spring again.
A new stupidity is coming
The old one is replaced.Cherries and those
May become nasty
Under the squeak of mosquitoes.
Haiku is not just a poetic form, but something more - a certain way of thinking, a special way of seeing the world. Haiku connects the worldly and the spiritual, the small and the great, the natural and the human, the momentary and the eternal. Spring - Summer - Autumn - Winter - this traditional division has a broader meaning than simply assigning poems to seasonal themes. In this single time space, not only nature moves and changes, but also man himself, whose life has its own Spring - Summer - Autumn - Winter. The natural world connects with the human world in eternity.
No matter what kind of haiku we take, there is always one main character - a person. Japanese poets with their haiku try to tell how a person lives on earth, what he thinks about, how he is sad and happy. They also help us feel and understand beauty. After all, everything in nature is beautiful: a huge oak tree, an inconspicuous blade of grass, a red deer, and a green frog. Even if you think about mosquitoes in winter, you will immediately remember summer, sun, walks in the forest.
Japanese poets teach us to take care of all living things, to feel sorry for all living things, because pity is a great feeling. He who does not know how to truly feel sorry will never become a kind person. Poets repeat again and again: peer into the familiar and you will see the unexpected, peer into the ugly and you will see the beautiful, peer into the simple and you will see the complex, peer into the particles and you will see the whole, peer into the small and you will see the great. To see the beautiful and not remain indifferent - this is what haiku poetry calls us to, glorifying humanity in Nature and spiritualizing the life of Man.
Haiku is a style of classical Japanese waka lyric poetry that has been popular since the 16th century.
Features and examples of haiku
This type of poetry, then called haiku, became a separate genre in the 16th century; This style received its current name in the 19th century thanks to the poet Masaoka Shiki. Matsuo Basho is recognized as the most famous haiku poet throughout the world.
How enviable is their fate!
North of the busy world
The cherries have blossomed in the mountains!
Autumn darkness
Broken and driven away
Conversation of friends
The structure and stylistic features of the haiku (hoku) genre
A real Japanese haiku consists of 17 syllables that form one column of characters. With special delimiting words kireji (Japanese “cutting word”) - the haiku verse is broken in the proportion 12:5 on the 5th syllable, or on the 12th.
Haiku in Japanese (Basho):
かれ朶に烏の とまりけり 秋の暮
Karaeda nikarasu no tomarikeri aki no kure
On a bare branch
Raven sits alone.
Autumn evening.
When translating haiku poems into Western languages, the kireji is replaced with a line break, so the haiku takes the form of a tercet. Among haiku, it is very rare to find verses consisting of two lines, composed in a ratio of 2:1. Modern haiku, which are composed in Western languages, usually include less than 17 syllables, while haiku written in Russian can be longer.
In the original haiku, the image associated with nature is especially important, which is juxtaposed with human life. The verse denotes the time of year using the necessary seasonal word kigo. Haiku are written only in the present tense: the author writes about his personal feelings about the event that just happened. Classic haiku does not have a name and does not use artistic and expressive means common in Western poetry (for example, rhyme), but uses some special techniques created by the national poetry of Japan. The skill of creating haiku poetry lies in the art of describing your feeling or moment of life in three lines. In Japanese tercet, every word and every image counts; they have great meaning and value. The basic rule of haiku is to express all your feelings using a minimum of words.
In haiku collections, each verse is often placed on an individual page. This is done so that the reader can concentrate, without haste, to experience the atmosphere of the haiku.
Photograph of a haiku in Japanese
haiku video
Video with examples of Japanese poetry about sakura.
Matsuo Basho. Engraving by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi from the series “101 Views of the Moon.” 1891 The Library of Congress
Genre haiku originated from another classical genre - pentaverse tank in 31 syllables, known since the 8th century. There was a caesura in the tanka, at this point it “broke” into two parts, resulting in a tercet of 17 syllables and a couplet of 14 syllables - a kind of dialogue, which was often composed by two authors. This original tercet was called haiku, which literally means "initial stanzas". Then, when the tercet received its own meaning and became a genre with its own complex laws, it began to be called haiku.
The Japanese genius finds himself in brevity. Haiku tercet is the most laconic genre of Japanese poetry: only 17 syllables of 5-7-5 mor. Mora- a unit of measurement for the number (longitude) of a foot. Mora is the time required to pronounce a short syllable. in line. There are only three or four significant words in a 17-syllable poem. In Japanese, a haiku is written in one line from top to bottom. In European languages, haiku is written in three lines. Japanese poetry does not know rhymes; by the 9th century, the phonetics of the Japanese language had developed, including only 5 vowels (a, i, u, e, o) and 10 consonants (except for voiced ones). With such phonetic poverty, no interesting rhyme is possible. Formally, the poem is based on the count of syllables.
Until the 17th century, haiku writing was viewed as a game. Hai-ku became a serious genre with the appearance of the poet Matsuo Basho on the literary scene. In 1681, he wrote the famous poem about the crow and completely changed the world of haiku:
On a dead branch
The raven turns black.
Autumn evening. Translation by Konstantin Balmont.
Let us note that the Russian symbolist of the older generation, Konstantin Balmont, in this translation replaced the “dry” branch with a “dead” one, excessively, according to the laws of Japanese versification, dramatizing this poem. The translation turns out to violate the rule of avoiding evaluative words and definitions in general, except for the most ordinary ones. "Words of Haiku" ( haigo) should be distinguished by deliberate, precisely calibrated simplicity, difficult to achieve, but clearly felt insipidity. Nevertheless, this translation correctly conveys the atmosphere created by Basho in this haiku, which has become a classic, the melancholy of loneliness, the universal sadness.
There is another translation of this poem:
Here the translator added the word “lonely,” which is not in the Japanese text, but its inclusion is nevertheless justified, since “sad loneliness on an autumn evening” is the main theme of this haiku. Both translations are rated very highly by critics.
However, it is obvious that the poem is even simpler than the translators presented. If you give its literal translation and place it in one line, as the Japanese write haiku, you will get the following extremely short statement:
枯れ枝にからすのとまりけるや秋の暮れ
On a dry branch / a raven sits / autumn twilight
As we can see, the word “black” is missing in the original, it is only implied. The image of a “chilled raven on a bare tree” is Chinese in origin. "Autumn Twilight" ( aki no kure) can be interpreted both as “late autumn” and as “autumn evening”. Monochrome is a quality highly valued in the art of haiku; depicts the time of day and year, erasing all colors.
Haiku is least of all a description. It is necessary not to describe, the classics said, but to name things (literally “to give names to things” - to the hole) in extremely simple words and as if you were calling them for the first time.
Raven on a winter branch. Engraving by Watanabe Seitei. Around 1900 ukiyo-e.org Haiku are not miniatures, as they were long called in Europe. The greatest haiku poet of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who died early from tuberculosis, Masaoka Shiki, wrote that haiku contains the whole world: the raging ocean, earthquakes, typhoons, the sky and stars - the whole earth with the highest peaks and the deepest sea depressions. The space of haiku is immense, infinite. In addition, haiku tends to be combined into cycles, into poetic diaries - and often life-long, so that the brevity of haiku can turn into its opposite: into long works - collections of poems (though of a discrete, intermittent nature ).
But the passage of time, past and future X does not depict aiku, haiku is a brief moment of the present - and nothing more. Here is an example of a haiku by Issa, perhaps the most beloved poet in Japan:
How the cherry blossomed!
She drove off her horse
And a proud prince.
Transience is an immanent property of life in the Japanese understanding; without it, life has no value or meaning. Fleetingness is both beautiful and sad because its nature is fickle and changeable.
An important place in haiku poetry is the connection with the four seasons - autumn, winter, spring and summer. The sages said: “He who has seen the seasons has seen everything.” That is, I saw birth, growing up, love, rebirth and death. Therefore, in classical haiku, a necessary element is the “seasonal word” ( kigo), which connects the poem with the season. Sometimes these words are difficult for foreigners to recognize, but the Japanese know them all. Detailed kigo databases, some of thousands of words, are now being searched on Japanese networks.
In the above haiku about the crow, the seasonal word is very simple - "autumn." The coloring of this poem is very dark, emphasized by the atmosphere of an autumn evening, literally “autumn twilight,” that is, black against the background of deepening twilight.
Look how gracefully Basho introduces the essential sign of the season into a poem about separation:
For a spike of barley
I grabbed, looking for support...
How difficult is the moment of separation!
“A spike of barley” directly indicates the end of summer.
Or in the tragic poem of the poetess Chiyo-ni on the death of her little son:
O my dragonfly catcher!
Where in an unknown country
Did you run in today?
"Dragonfly" is a seasonal word for summer.
Another “summer” poem by Basho:
Summer herbs!
Here they are, the fallen warriors
Dreams of glory...
Basho is called the poet of wanderings: he wandered a lot around Japan in search of true haiku, and, when setting off, he did not care about food, lodging, tramps, or the vicissitudes of the path in the remote mountains. On the way, he was accompanied by the fear of death. A sign of this fear was the image of “Bones Whitening in the Field” - this was the name of the first book of his poetic diary, written in the genre haibun(“prose in haiku style”):
Maybe my bones
The wind will whiten... It's in the heart
It breathed cold on me.
After Basho, the theme of “death on the way” became canonical. Here is his last poem, “The Dying Song”:
I got sick on the way,
And everything runs and circles my dream
Through scorched fields.
Imitating Basho, haiku poets always composed “last stanzas” before they died.
"True" ( Makoto-no) the poems of Basho, Buson, Issa are close to our contemporaries. The historical distance is, as it were, removed in them due to the immutability of the haiku language, its formulaic nature, which has been preserved throughout the history of the genre from the 15th century to the present day.
The main thing in the worldview of a haikaist is an acute personal interest in the form of things, their essence, and connections. Let us remember the words of Basho: “Learn from the pine tree what pine is, learn from bamboo what bamboo is.” Japanese poets cultivated meditative contemplation of nature, peering into the objects surrounding a person in the world, into the endless cycle of things in nature, into its bodily, sensual features. The poet's goal is to observe nature and intuitively discern its connections with the human world; haikaists rejected ugliness, pointlessness, utilitarianism, and abstraction.
Basho created not only haiku poetry and haibun prose, but also the image of a poet-wanderer - a noble man, outwardly ascetic, in a poor dress, far from everything worldly, but also aware of the sad involvement in everything happening in the world, preaching conscious “simplification”. The haiku poet is characterized by an obsession with wandering, the Zen Buddhist ability to embody the great in the small, awareness of the frailty of the world, the fragility and changeability of life, the loneliness of man in the universe, the tart bitterness of existence, a sense of the inseparability of nature and man, hypersensitivity to all natural phenomena and the change of seasons .
The ideal of such a person is poverty, simplicity, sincerity, a state of spiritual concentration necessary to comprehend things, but also lightness, transparency of verse, the ability to depict the eternal in the current.
At the end of these notes, we present two poems by Issa, a poet who treated with tenderness everything small, fragile, and defenseless:
Quietly, quietly crawl,
Snail, on the slope of Fuji,
Up to the very heights!Hiding under the bridge,
Sleeping on a snowy winter night
Homeless child.
A few years ago, the Russian Wildlife Conservation Center held an unexpected competition in support of the “March of the Parks” campaign - children were invited to try themselves in writing haiku - Japanese verses reflecting the diversity and beauty of wildlife and illustrating the relationship between nature and man. 330 schoolchildren from various regions of Russia took part in the competition. Our review contains a selection of poems from the winners of the competition. And to give an idea of classical haiku, we present the works of famous Japanese poets of the 17th-19th centuries that are closest in theme, translated by Markova.
Classic Japanese haiku
Reeds cut for the roof.
On forgotten stems
Fine snow is falling.
I'm walking along a mountain path.
Suddenly I felt at ease for some reason.
Violets in the thick grass.
Long day long
Sings - and doesn’t get drunk
Lark in spring.
Hey shepherd boy!
Leave some branches to the plum tree,
Cutting the whips.
Oh, how many of them there are in the fields!
But everyone blooms in their own way -
This is the highest feat of a flower!
Trees were planted in the garden.
Quietly, quietly, to encourage them,
Autumn rain whispers.
In the cup of a flower
The bumblebee is dozing. Don't touch him
Sparrow friend!
On a bare branch
Raven sits alone.
Autumn evening.
Competitive haiku for Russian schoolchildren
By a lake in the mountains
Black-capped marmot.
He feels good.
Violeta Bagdanova, 9 years old, Kamchatka region
Dream grass blooms
Like a blue flame
Under the spring sun.
Ekaterina Antonyuk, 12 years old, Ryazan region
Tulips are sad
Waiting for the smile of the sun
The whole steppe will burn.
Elmira Dibirova, 14 years old, Republic of Kalmykia
Bloody field
But there was no battle.
The sardanas have blossomed.
Violetta Zasimova, 15 years old, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)
Little flower.
Little bee.
Happy to see each other.
Seryozha Stremnov, 9 years old, Krasnoyarsk region
Lily of the valley
It grows, pleases, heals.
Miracle.
Yana Saleeva, 9 years old, Khabarovsk region
Horseflies bite moose.
He gives them
A life full of joy.
Dmitry Chubov, 11th grade, Moscow
Sad picture:
Wounded deer
The brave hunter finishes off.
Maxim Novitsky, 14 years old, Republic of Karelia
Tractor, wait
A nest in the thick grass!
Let the chicks fly!
Anastasia Skvortsova, 8 years old, Tokyo
Little ant
Did so much good for Tom,
who crushed him.
Yulia Salmanova, 13 years old, Altai Republic
The Japanese, as you know, have their own special view of many things. Including fashion. This is proof of this.
BASHO (1644–1694)
Evening bindweed
I'm captured...Motionless
I stand in oblivion.
There's such a moon in the sky,
Like a tree cut down to the roots:
The fresh cut turns white.
A yellow leaf floats.
Which shore, cicada,
What if you wake up?
Willow is bent over and sleeping.
And, it seems to me, a nightingale on a branch -
This is her soul.
How the autumn wind whistles!
Then only you will understand my poems,
When you spend the night in the field.
And I want to live in autumn
To this butterfly: drinks hastily
There is dew from the chrysanthemum.
Oh, wake up, wake up!
Become my comrade
Sleeping moth!
The jug burst with a crash:
At night the water in it froze.
I woke up suddenly.
Stork nest in the wind.
And underneath - beyond the storm -
Cherry is a calm color.
Long day long
Sings - and doesn’t get drunk
Lark in spring.
Over the expanse of fields -
Not tied to the ground by anything -
The lark is ringing.
It's raining in May.
What is this? Has the rim on the barrel burst?
The sound is unclear at night.
Pure spring!
Up ran up my leg
Little crab.
Today is a clear day.
But where do the drops come from?
There is a patch of clouds in the sky.
It's like I took it in my hands
Lightning when in the dark
You lit a candle.
How fast the moon flies!
On motionless branches
Drops of rain hung.
Oh no, ready
I won't find any comparisons for you,
Three day month!
Hanging motionless
Dark cloud in half the sky...
Apparently he's waiting for lightning.
Oh, how many of them there are in the fields!
But everyone blooms in their own way -
This is the highest feat of a flower!
I wrapped my life around
Around the suspension bridge
This wild ivy.
Spring is leaving.
The birds are crying. Fish eyes
Full of tears.
Garden and mountain in the distance
Trembling, moving, entering
In a summer open house.
May rains
The waterfall was buried -
They filled it with water.
Summer herbs
Where the heroes disappeared
Like a dream.
Islands... Islands...
And it splits into hundreds of fragments
Sea of a summer day.
Silence all around.
Penetrate into the heart of the rocks
Voices of cicadas.
Tide Gate.
Washes the heron up to its chest
Cool sea.
Small perches are dried
On the branches of a willow... How cool!
Fishing huts on the shore.
Wet, walking in the rain,
But this traveler is worthy of song too,
Not only hagi are in bloom.
Farewell poems
I wanted to write on the fan -
It broke in my hand.
where the bell once sank
Where are you, moon, now?
Like a sunken bell
She disappeared to the bottom of the sea.
A secluded house.
Moon... Chrysanthemums... In addition to them
A patch of small field.
In a mountain village
The nuns story
About previous service at court...
There is deep snow all around.
Mossy gravestone.
Under it - is it in reality or in a dream? –
A voice whispers prayers.
The dragonfly is spinning...
Can't get a hold
For stalks of flexible grass.
The bell fell silent in the distance,
But the scent of evening flowers
Its echo floats.
Falls with a leaf...
No, look! Halfway there
The firefly flew up.
Fisherman's hut.
Mixed up in a pile of shrimp
Lonely cricket.
Sick goose dropped
On a field on a cold night.
A lonely dream on the way.
Even a wild boar
Will spin you around and take you with you
This winter field whirlwind!
sad me
Give me more sadness,
Cuckoos distant call!
I clapped my hands loudly.
And where the echo sounded,
The summer moon is growing pale.
On the night of the full moon
A friend sent me a gift
Risu, I invited him
To visit the moon itself.
Of great antiquity
There's a whiff... The garden near the temple
Covered with fallen leaves.
So easy, so easy
Floated out - and in the cloud
The moon thought.
White fungus in the forest.
Some unknown leaf
It stuck to his hat.
Dewdrops sparkle.
But they have a taste of sadness,
Don't forget!
That's right, this cicada
Are you all drunk? –
One shell remains.
The leaves have fallen.
The whole world is one color.
Only the wind hums.
Trees were planted in the garden.
Quietly, quietly, to encourage them,
Autumn rain whispers.
So that the cold whirlwind
Give them the aroma, they open up again
Late autumn flowers.
Rocks among cryptomerias!
How I sharpened their teeth
Winter cold wind!
Everything was covered with snow.
Lonely old woman
In a forest hut.
Planting rice
I didn’t have time to take my hands away,
Like a spring breeze
Settled in a green sprout.
All the excitement, all the sadness
Of your troubled heart
Give it to the flexible willow.
She closed her mouth tightly
Sea shell.
Unbearable heat!
In memory of the poet Tojun
Stayed and left
Bright moon... Stayed
Table with four corners.
Seeing a painting for sale
works by Kano Motonobu
...Brushes by Motonobu himself!
How sad is the fate of your masters!
The twilight of the year is approaching.
Under the open umbrella
I make my way through the branches.
Willows in the first down.
From the sky of its peaks
Only river willows
It's still raining.
Saying goodbye to friends
The ground disappears from under your feet.
I grab onto a light ear...
The moment of separation has arrived.
Transparent Waterfall…
Fell into a light wave
Pine needle.
Hanging in the sun
Cloud... Across it -
Migratory birds.
Autumn darkness
Broken and driven away
Conversation of friends.
Death Song
I got sick on the way.
And everything runs, my dream circles
Through scorched fields.
A strand of dead mother's hair
If I take her in my hands,
It will melt - my tears are so hot! –
Autumn frost of hair.
Spring morning.
Over every nameless hill
Transparent haze.
I'm walking along a mountain path.
Suddenly I felt at ease for some reason.
Violets in the thick grass.
On a mountain pass
To the capital - there, in the distance -
Half the sky remains...
Snow clouds.
She is only nine days old.
But both fields and mountains know:
Spring has come again.
Where it once stood
buddha statue
Cobwebs above.
I see the image of Buddha again
At the foot of the empty.
Soaring larks above
I sat down to rest in the sky -
On the very ridge of the pass.
Visiting Nara City
On Buddha's birthday
He was born
Little deer.
Where it flies
The pre-dawn cry of the cuckoo,
What's there? - Distant island.
Flute Sanemori
Sumadera Temple.
I hear the flute playing by itself
In the dark thicket of trees.
KORAI (1651–1704)
How is this, friends?
A man looks at the cherry blossoms
And on his belt is a long sword!
On the death of a younger sister
Alas, in my hand,
Weakening unnoticeably,
My firefly went out.
ISSE (1653–1688)
Seen everything in the world
My eyes are back
To you, white chrysanthemums.
RANSETSU (1654–1707)
autumn moon
Painting a pine tree with ink
In blue skies.
Flower... And another flower...
This is how the plum blossoms,
This is how warmth comes.
I looked at midnight:
Changed direction
Heavenly river.
KIKAKU (1661–1707)
Midge light swarm
Flies upward - floating bridge
For my dream.
A beggar is on the way!
In the summer all his clothes are
Heaven and earth.
To me at dawn in a dream
My mother has come... Don't drive her away
With your cry, cuckoo!
How beautiful your fish are!
But if only, old fisherman,
You could try them yourself!
Paid tribute
Earthly and fell silent,
Like the sea on a summer day.
JOSO (1662–1704)
And fields and mountains -
The snow quietly stole everything...
It immediately became empty.
Moonlight is pouring from the sky.
Hid in the shadow of the idol
Blinded Owl.
ONITSURA (1661–1738)
No place for water from the vat
Spit it out for me now...
Cicadas are singing everywhere!
TIYO (1703–1775)
During the night the bindweed entwined itself
Around the tub of my well...
I'll get some water from my neighbor!
To the death of a little son
O my dragonfly catcher!
Far into the unknown distance
Did you run in today?
Full moon night!
Even the birds didn't lock it up
Doors in their nests.
Dew on saffron flowers!
It will spill onto the ground
And it will become simple water...
O bright moon!
I walked and walked to you,
And you are still far away.
Only their screams can be heard...
Egrets are invisible
In the morning on fresh snow.
Plum spring color
Gives its aroma to a person...
The one who broke the branch.
KAKEI (1648–1716)
The autumn storm is raging!
Barely born month
He's about to sweep it out of the sky.
SICO (1665–1731)
O maple leaves!
You burn your wings
Flying birds.
BUSON (1716–1783)
From this willow
The evening twilight begins.
Road in the field.
Here they come out of the box...
How could I forget your faces?..
It's time for holiday dolls.
Heavy bell.
And at its very edge
A butterfly is dozing.
Only the top of Fuji
They didn’t bury themselves
Young leaves.
Cool breeze.
Leaving the bells
The evening bell floats.
Old well in the village.
The fish rushed after the midge...
A dark splash in the depths.
Thunderstorm shower!
It barely clings to the grass
A flock of sparrows.
The moon shines so brightly!
Suddenly came across me
The blind man laughed...
"The storm has begun!" –
Robber on the road
Warned me.
The cold penetrated to the heart:
On the crest of the deceased wife
I stepped in the bedroom.
I hit with an ax
And froze... What a scent
There was a whiff of air in the winter forest!
To the west is moonlight
Moving. Shadows of flowers
They are going east.
The summer night is short.
Sparkled on the caterpillar
Drops of dawn dew.
KITO (1741–1789)
I met a messenger on the way.
Spring wind playing
The open letter rustles.
Thunderstorm shower!
Dropped Dead
The horse comes to life.
You're walking on the clouds
And suddenly on a mountain path
Through the rain - cherry blossoms!
ISSA (1768–1827)
This is how the pheasant screams
It's like he opened it
The first star.
The winter snow has melted.
Light up with joy
Even the faces of the stars.
There are no strangers between us!
We are all each other's brothers
Under the cherry blossoms.
Look, nightingale
Sings the same song
And in the face of the gentlemen!
Passing wild goose!
Tell me your wanderings
How old were you when you started?
O cicada, don't cry!
There is no love without separation
Even for the stars in the sky.
The snow has melted -
And suddenly the whole village is full
Noisy kids!
Oh, don't trample the grass!
There were fireflies shining
Yesterday at night sometimes.
The moon has come out
And the smallest bush
Invited to the celebration.
That's right, in a previous life
You were my sister
Sad cuckoo...
Tree - for felling...
And the birds carefree
They're building a nest there!
Don't quarrel along the way,
Help each other like brothers
Migratory birds!
To the death of a little son
Our life is a dewdrop.
Let just a drop of dew
Our life - and yet...
Oh, if only there was an autumn whirlwind
He brought so many fallen leaves,
To warm the hearth!
Quietly, quietly crawl,
Snail, along the slope of Fuji
Up to the very heights!
In thickets of weeds,
Look how beautiful they are
Butterflies are born!
I punished the child
But he tied him to a tree there,
Where the cool wind blows.
Sad world!
Even when the cherry blossoms...
Even then…
So I knew in advance
That they are beautiful, these mushrooms,
Killing people!
