I had never read this particular haiku by Ō no Yasumaro before, and I was totally delighted to have the opportunity to do so now. It really is an excellent example of how to write a memorable haiku.
While you decline to cry,
high on the mountainside
a single stalk of plumegrass wilts.
― Ō no Yasumaro, translation by Michael R. Burch
(619K)
My translation of "Plumegrass Wilts" is the first poem on the EnglishLiterature.net poem definition and example page, and the poem returned 619K Google results at its peak.
When a haiku is written well, we seem to know instantly that it's good. Then it's meaning, or many meanings, come to us over time. As haiku go, this one is right up there with the best of them and it obviously lost nothing in translation. Well done, Mike!.
Letting go of attachments, judgements, and assumptions, we suddenly – if only for a few seconds – simply know. More closely seen, we simply remember what we’ve always known. The knowledge permeates the senses now changed and refined. The knowing is not explainable, then not describable, then not even nameable, and never imaginable -- it is that real! And yet! Because this is what we are become, we know no greater desire but, each in his own way, to act, explain, describe, name, and imagine whatever we can to attract the suffering world to the same. Because we are the world, each of us, and also all of us.
I had never read this particular haiku by Ō no Yasumaro before, and I was totally delighted to have the opportunity to do so now. It really is an excellent example of how to write a memorable haiku.
While you decline to cry,
high on the mountainside
a single stalk of plumegrass wilts.
― Ō no Yasumaro, translation by Michael R. Burch
(619K)
My translation of "Plumegrass Wilts" is the first poem on the EnglishLiterature.net poem definition and example page, and the poem returned 619K Google results at its peak.
I think it is a delightful haiku, and an early one, written circa 711 AD.
When a haiku is written well, we seem to know instantly that it's good. Then it's meaning, or many meanings, come to us over time. As haiku go, this one is right up there with the best of them and it obviously lost nothing in translation. Well done, Mike!.
Amazing things happen when we just let go.
Letting go of attachments, judgements, and assumptions, we suddenly – if only for a few seconds – simply know. More closely seen, we simply remember what we’ve always known. The knowledge permeates the senses now changed and refined. The knowing is not explainable, then not describable, then not even nameable, and never imaginable -- it is that real! And yet! Because this is what we are become, we know no greater desire but, each in his own way, to act, explain, describe, name, and imagine whatever we can to attract the suffering world to the same. Because we are the world, each of us, and also all of us.
You have done well, Michael.
Thanks, I'm glad you approve.
I may prove a poet yet.