kogoto iu aite mo araba kyou no tsuki
to hear my grumbling...
ah, tonight's moon
—Issa
The Tragic life of Issa
Another haiku from Issa tonight, this time a sad one. Most of the haiku Issa wrote, and most of the ones I've share here, are happy, but he didn't avoid other emotions. Many of Issa's haiku took a sad tone like this. He led a tragic life. His first child, a son, died soon after birth. His second child, a daughter, died two years later. He had another child, his second son, who also died. Shortly after, his beloved wife fell ill and died. Of her death he wrote:
生き残り生き残りたる寒さかな
outliving them
outliving them all
ah, the cold
He also wrote the haiku I featured at the top of this post after his wife's death.
He kept a good humor about himself which comes through in most of his poetry, but his sorrow also comes through often. I mentioned before that Issa may well be more popular than the great Bashō; it is due to this honesty in confessing his true feelings, his doubts and loneliness in highly personal haiku, that Issa's poems have given consolation to generations of readers and won him so many fans through the years. He is usually considered the most human of the great haiku masters of the past.
The Moon
It's autumn (at least in haiku reckoning), and that means the major season topic is the moon.
As I've written before, in traditional haiku we should include a reference to the season in the form of a season word (季語 kigo). This season word is suppose to refer to whatever the current season is at the time of the poem's writing, and according to the old calendar. Moon is considered an Autumn kigo, so it is a common topic in haiku written at this time.
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 | David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. |
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That is, me! If you like this translation, feel free to use it. Just credit me. Also link here if you can. ↩