Lament for five sons lost in a plague Run down by fate’s spiteArabic poems
Waves Waves bow before the shore
courtiers to their king
and then withdraw.
—Unknown
*
Lament for five sons lost in a plague Run down by fate’s spite My body hangs, a mantle on a broom;
with wealth enough to ease all pain I turn at night from back to belly side after side after side. Who put pebbles on my couch when my sons died?
I tried but could not shield them well enough from fate whose talon-grip turns amulet to toy.
Thorns tear out my eyes. I lie, a flagstone at the feet of Time all men wear me down but even those my pain delights envy that I cannot cringe at fortune’s spite.
—Abu Dhu’Ayb Al-Hudhali
Persian poems
Young or old we die Young or old we die for every neck a noose though the rope be long for some,
struggle or calm broke or a king life’s but wind and a dream perhaps describing some other thing;
and with the end all will be the same again and all will be well.
[image] Cat with lantern,Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847 – 1915)
snow is falling– from the rooftop the sound of a white cat — Masaoka Shiki
It is one of the ma[image] Cat with lantern,Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847 – 1915)
snow is falling– from the rooftop the sound of a white cat — Masaoka Shiki
It is one of the many beautiful pictures in this book, which compiles haiku and paintings about cats and their complex nature, unquestionable charm, and calming companionship. It was easy to pick this collection as the first one in 2023.
silently, the cats in love depart — Chiyo-Ni
I bought the book at a big bookstore in Sydney, where I celebrated New Year's Eve. The bookmark, Mount Fuji, was purchased in Kyoto, where I spent my holidays after a week in Tokyo.
[image] Cat at the entrance of Kaneiji Temple, Tokyo.
[image] Cat spotted at Fushimi Inari Taisha, Kyoto.
Many memories in those photos; in my mind. Marvellous moments with loved ones; pangs of sadness at the thought of absence.
with a cat growing wistful for the voices of people — Santoka Taneda
However, I feel grateful for the opportunities I found last year, the lessons learnt, the goals achieved, the dreams fulfilled.
sleeping, then waking, after a big yawn the cat searches for love — Kobayashi Issa *
And the love found.
I hope 2023 brings more lessons and growth, health, great books, and people we can callfamily. Happy New Year.
Jan 1, 2023 * This quoted haiku is one I found when I randomly opened the book to see what poem I might get....more
To say goodbye is to die a little,said Raymond Chandler. Over a month ago, I said goodbye to my country, family and friends, familiar plac
[image]
To say goodbye is to die a little,said Raymond Chandler. Over a month ago, I said goodbye to my country, family and friends, familiar places and sensations. I died a little and felt more alive than ever. Immersed in the Woolfesque atmosphere created by Michael Cunningham, I looked life in the face and confronted fears, challenged assumptions, tested hypotheses, and wrote a new chapter. I am currently living inAustralia. Again, I don’t have much free time for literature since I’m studying my third career: Programming. I’ve also resumed creating content on Instagram:@firenzeforti,if you'd like to drop by. I’m sharing this new experience and posting information to help people take a leap of faith and move from vision to reality.
[image]
It's been a complicated, bittersweet year. I'm still coping with a tragic loss, and despite the typical struggles that a life-changing event such as moving to another country entails, I feel fine, safe and loved. The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketchesdescribes Bashō's series of travels in the 17th century, masterfully blending haiku and prose. Ordinary affairs of life and musings of the spiritual world. After hundreds of years, we still embark on journeys to discover something new about ourselves, gain fresh perspectives, enrich our lives with new cultures, and attain some inner peace. With its highs and lows, my journey has been a meditative experience amidst the most beautiful natural setting, so it feels like the perfect time to reread Bashō's reflections on life and nature.
Still alive I am At the end of a long dream On my journey, Fall of an autumn day. — Bashō
[image]
Aug 31, 2022 * Credit: Photos I've taken in Australia, where I'm currently residing. ** Later onmy blog....more
Eight thousand kinds of bushes, Trees and flowers blossom, And the voices of the singing birds even change. Each time we hea
Each season, more lovely,
Eight thousand kinds of bushes, Trees and flowers blossom, And the voices of the singing birds even change. Each time we hear it with our ears And see it with our eyes, And still sighing within, we bend down, Heartshaken, longing and yearning while living on. …
Yakamochi
*
Upon the mountain edge Noisy as a flock of teal Though we are walking, I am lonely, ah! Because you are not here.
precisely because the gods are invisible they are believed in me ni mienu / kami nareba koso / shinjirare —Shinpei
autumn wind – for me there are no gods, no
precisely because the gods are invisible they are believed in me ni mienu / kami nareba koso / shinjirare —Shinpei
autumn wind – for me there are no gods, no buddhas aki kaze ya / ware ni kami nashi / hotoke nashi —Shiki
The golden ring she wore until the last minute and that I am wearing now hung on a necklace. The tiny Saint Benedict Medals that I am wearing now as a bracelet on my left wrist, even though I am not a Catholic—she was; she had bought one for her and one for me. The fact that I'm wearing these medals might be a sign that there is something more powerful and reassuring than the existence of god. It is the connection I make between those medals—symbols of Catholicism—and the life of someone who loved me unconditionally. Paraphrasing Julian Barnes, I don’t know if there is a god to believe in, but I miss him.
when at last one longs to be filial both parents are gone kōkō no / shitai jibun ni / oya wa nashi
Author unnamed.In Yanagidaru 22 (1788). A deservedly proverbial verse. Try as one might to live up to the Confucian ideal of respecting one’s parents, one can never fully appreciate something until having experienced it oneself. This poignant message is reinforced through subtle wordplay (sometimes with different graphs): at ‘the time of life’ (jibun) when one ‘oneself’ (jibun) becomes a parent and realizes how challenging it is to raise children, one has a newfound appreciation for one’s own parents, making one ‘desire’ (shitai) being ‘filial’ (kōkō), though it remains an ‘incurable condition’ (kōkō) that by then those parents may ‘not be around’ (nashi) much longer, and sometimes even are already lifeless ‘corpses’ (shitai).
Not long ago, I said that selfless love could only be found in a mother (notallmothers—as we have daily proof, motherhood is not an unmistakable sign of goodness—butina mother). Perhaps I'm being unfair to the rest of humanity that may have the capacity to love like that. Of course, I don't know the billions of people inhabiting this endangered planet. But, as a mere and often detached observant, it seemed to me that there usually was a tinge of selfishness in how people love. A tinge, a bucket, a cargo ship; it depends. We've been told that love is the opposite of a selfish emotion. There is no good love, bad love, toxic love. It's just love. Intrinsically selfless. Unrealistically defined. There's the love of a mother, the kind of love I felt all my life since its nature is being unique, standing the test of time. My existence, her priority. And then comes the love we feel for others: the romantic, the platonic, the 'I love humanity but not people' type of love. Depending on the person, those other types may have that hint of understandable selfishness, a changing intensity—it is where the sense of uniqueness may start to evanesce. Or not.
tumultuous seas! stretched out to Sado Isle, the River of Heaven araumi ya / sado ni yokotau / amanogawa
Bashō.This acclaimed meditation on emotional turmoil, displacement, isolation and the hope of reunion, however fleeting, invokes the legend of those long-suffering lovers, the celestial stars Weaver Maid (orihimeor Vega) and Oxherd Boy (hikoboshior Altair), who are rejoined only one night each year, on the seventh day of the seventh lunisolar month. Yet it also invokes the mystique of Sado Island (Sadogashima), notorious as a remote place of exile (located off the coast in the far north-eastern reaches of Japan’s mainland). [...] The rhythm and sound of the vowels in the first line,ah-ah-oo-eh-ah,conjure up the choppiness and expansiveness of the Sea of Japan, infamous for its violent storms. Playing with the termamanogawa,literally ‘Heaven’s River’, Bashō has the Milky Way span these waters to Sado – except that instead of the grammatical ‘exist sideways’, he strikingly deploys the transitive verbyokotau,‘be existed sideways’, implying that some force of creation has moved the very heavens.
I haven't been reading much lately. Not literature, I mean. And I haven't been writing reviews for a while. I haven't missed it; I wasn't in the mood to discuss a book and let emotions emerge; they expect confrontation. But I've been busy, yes. I'm on the verge of a life-changing event, and partly, that's what has been keeping me on my feet, moving forward. Someone at work once told me that people should always have projects, especially when we find ourselves, for whatever reason, alone in the world—we should always have a dream to come true. And that the passage of time was not an excuse not to make it happen because a sense of purpose, be it big or small, is vital to us. I do have projects, dreams, and longings, a few regrets despite knowing how fruitless that is due to our inability to change the past—I have rationalised Bertrand Russel's wordsad infinitum,but to have no regrets is a long-term project.
cooling breeze – the boundless sky filled with pining voices suzukaze ya / kokū ni michite / matsu no koe
Onitsura.
However, the world feels scarier and more challenging in the eyes of someone holding a new status—that of an orphan. A rite of passage prematurely done. And, just like maternal love, there is a void that will stand the test of time. It is irreplaceable. Profound. Permanent. So vast that it can be explained in three lines. That's the greatness of haiku: it unravels human nature as succinctly as possible. Creation, love, art, nature, lust (from eroticism to pornography), deceit, wealth, cicadas, death. One syllable.¹ Four more. Seven, five. An hourglass inside a grain of sand.
that gentle breeze from the slumbering fan – a mother’s love utatane no / uchiwa no kaze ga / haha no on
Author unnamed.In Yanagidaru shūi 9 (c.1796–7).
The Penguin Book of Haiku,translated by Adam Kern, is a thoroughly researched collection that includes the most famous, relatively known and undeservedly lesser-known haiku that, as tradition dictates, contain seasonal references, dramatic pauses and a plethora of interpretations. Several poems come with a commentary that sheds some light on the poetic intents or the historical contexts. There are also beautiful illustrations of various poets or moments portrayed in their haiku.
laughing loudly that the loneliness might be forgotten takawarai / shite sabishisa o / wasureru ki
Chigusa.
I have many favourites. I can’t get tired of reading the different translations of the same poem. Today, Issa's most quoted haiku spoke volumes. He evoked and shared his sorrow through verses brimming with natural beauty, marked by poignant, relentless repetition. Death becomes something rational until it stops making sense. It brings some solace in the context of a long illness, only to shake us to the core again at the sight of an empty room, a lonely breakfast, a missing word. It makes us wear Saint Benedict Medals when we are not sure if there is something beyond our world, but even so, we feel our loved ones close, beautiful as dew, looking after us.
this world of dew... though a world of dew it remains, still, even so... tsuyu no yo wa / tsuyu no yo nagara / sari nagara
Issa.InOraga haru(Spring of My Life, 1819). A renowned verse on the death of his young daughter. The pointed repetition ofnagara,‘despite’, effectively unravels the meaning of this verse, suggesting the poet’s own unravelling. And the haunting repetition oftsuyu no yo,‘world of dew’, suggesting that the poet cannot quite grasp the reality that has brought him to this point, begs pondering.Tsuyu,‘dew’, has two not-unrelated sets of associations: first, an image of freshness, beauty and moisture associated with autumn – though, ironically, his daughter was in the springtime of her life and died on the day of the summer solstice; and second, a venerable symbol of Buddhist impermanence, as with a well-known line from theDiamond Sutra(Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtrain Sanskrit;Kongōkyōin Japanese): ‘all conditioned things are like a dream, a phantom, a drop of dew, a lightning flash’. Thesari,‘thus’, in the verse’s final phrasesari nagara,‘be that as it may’, has homonyms in ‘leaving’ (fromsaru) and in the desiccated ‘remains’ (also renderedshari) of a cremated corpse. Unpacked, the verse seems to be saying: ‘Intellectually, I understand the truth that this world is as impermanent as dew, but somehow that insight offers no consolation as I grieve over the charred remains of my beautiful-as-dew young daughter, whose death has shaken me to the core.’
[image]
April 24, 22
* Later onmy blog. ** Notes: 1. Or ‘syllabet’, as the translator prefers to call them:Observing that English syllables are heavier than their Japanese counterparts (onji), Blyth advocated a 2–3–2 accented beat scheme in translation. Granted, the English syllable does not always map directly onto Japanese, which is lighter, more fleet of poetic foot. Like the stride as a unit of measurement, the syllable is variable, ranging from shortish (‘uh’) to prolonged (‘strengths’). Japanese syllabets tend to fall uniformly on the higher, more lightweight side of the scales. And while I follow robin d. gill in using this diminutive term ‘syllabet’ for the Japanese, reserving ‘syllable’ for the English, in my experience the briefer the translation the greater the danger of lapsing into ungrammatical fortune-cookie pithiness.[…]...more
Loading...
