Something simple? - Japanese Poetry

[Zeno]

The tanka is a five-line poem, of which the first and third lines have five syllables each and the others seven, making a total of thiry-one syllables per poem. During the 16th-18th centuries, out of this already short poem were evolved the haiku, seventeen syllable poems of three lines.

Japanese poety has no rhyme, but has other devices, some of which defy translation into the English language.

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It is other people who have separated
You and me.
Come, my lord!
Do not dream of listening
To the between-words of people!

(The Lady of Sakanoye [8th century])



The men of valor
Have gone to the honourable hunt:
The Ladies
Are trailing their red petticoats
Over the clean sea-beach.

(Akahito)


May the men who are born
From my time onwards
Never, never meet
With a path of love-making
Such as mine has been!

(Hitomaro)


Can this world
From of old
[Always] have been so sad,
Or did it become so for the sake
Of me alone?

(Anonymous)


My love
Is like the grasses
Hidden in the deep mountain:
Though its abundance increases,
There is none that knows.

(Ono No Yoshiki [died 902])




All of the above is from "Classical Literature of Asia" edited by John D. Yohannan.

[MMMMMM]

One of my old favorites (Buson?):

I know not from what temple
the wind brings the voice of the bell

and this just found, in a book titled: The Path of Flowering Thorn / The Life and Poetry of Yosa Buson

spring nears its end
--how pathetic! A warbler
singing in an old voice

[Zeno]

From the same book - the first one is charmingly whimisical - the second is exquisite.

Taniguchi Buson (1715-1783]

Spring rain!
the little froglets' bellies
haven't got wet!



What a piercing cold I feel!
My dead wife's comb, in our bedroom,
under my heel....


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Two more -


Matsuo Basho [1644-1694]

Cool it is, and still:
just the tip of a crescent moon
over the Black-wing hill.


A lighting-gleam:
into darkness travels
a night-heron's scream.

[MMMMMM]

Surprising that you have the same two books I have...many other compilations of Dickinson are available, and it is a special book of Buson.

Here, picked by the Zen monk Soen Nakagawa as being possibly the most representative of Basho's haiku:


First winter rain
monkey, too, wishes for
a small straw raincoat

-Basho


And by Soen:

Soft spring rain-
since when
have I been called a monk?