A RAUCOUS SOLITUDE
What burning stillness! Brass cicada-drones
Drill their resonance into rocks and stones.
—BASHÔ
THE TORTOISE-SHELL CAT
The brazen sunflower glowed, as underneath
A tigress bore her cub between her teeth.
—BUSHI
AFTER THE DEATH OF HER SMALL SON
Alas! How far beyond recall today,
My hunter after dragonflies, you stray!
—CHIYO
WITH MINDLESS SKILL
The erratic swallow, as it dips and veers,
Almost grazes the nodding barley-ears.
—IZAN
IRONICAL
How hot the pedlar, panting with his pack
Of fans—a load of breezes on his back!
—KAKÔ
PRIMEVAL BREATH
High in the air the mounting cloud-mass swells,
Over the dried marsh where a python dwells.
—SHIKI
ETERNAL LIFE
A shrill cicada dinning: from its cry,
None could foretell how quickly it must die.6
—BASHÔ
SATORI
I bowed before the Buddha, now obscure,
Now bright with lightning, on the stormy moor.
—KAKEI
INDRA'S NET
The sun-shower, mirrored in a globe of rain,
Hangs for one moment, never seen again.
—HÔ-Ô
LATE VICTORY
The thunderstorm retreating, sunset still
Burns on a tree in which cicadas shrill.
—SHIKI
THE RIVER'S MOUTH
Swollen by floods, Mogami's estuary
Swallowed the red-hot sunball undersea.
—BASHÔ
HIDDEN INFLUENCE
A Buddhist sutra, calmly chanted, fills
With cool refreshing air the fields and hills.
—KYORAI
DEATH BY ECSTASY
Discarded, one cicada's casket lay:
Did it utterly sing itself away?
—BASHÔ
RELAXATION
The evening cool: enjoyed beneath the sallows,
Paddling amid my shadow in the shallows.
—BUSON
ISSA'S ADVICE
You plump green watermelons, keeping cool,
Turn into frogs, if boys pass by your pool!
—ISSA
RUSTIC SECURITY
I shut my brushwood gate; but should that fail
To stop intruders, for a lock—this snail!
—ISSA
A SLICE OF MELON
The melon-fields lie waiting under skies
Of sultry darkness for the moon to rise.
—SORA
THE METEOR
Just as that firefly, glowing on a spray
Of leaves, dropped off—it suddenly shot away!
—BASHÔ
FIRST GLIMPSE
Monsoonal rains; and then one night there shines,
As though by stealth, the moon between the pines.
—RYÔTA
SITTING ON KYORAL'S VERANDA
A cuckoo called! The moonlight filters through
Shadow-shifting thickets of cool bamboo.
—BASHÔ
AFTER THE HEAT
A moonlit evening: here beside the pool,
Stripped to the waist, a snail enjoys the cool.
—ISSA
ON A DRAWING BY SOKEI-AN
The black cat's face: an unexpected dawn
Has swallowed midnight in a wide pink yawn.
—HÔ-Ô
FLORAL REPAIRS
The morning-glory flowers have opened, patching
My hermitage's roof which needed thatching.
—ISSA
THE TASK
O timid snail, by nature weak and lowly,
Crawl up the cone of Fuji slowly, slowly. . . .
—ISSA
