I thought you might like some haiku for your Poem of the Day today. Kobayashi Issa (1763 1828)[1] was a Japanese haiku master and lay Buddhist priest. Better known simply as Issa (a pen name meaning Cup-of-tea] he is regarded as one of the four haiku masters in Japan. He wrote over 20,000 haiku, which were popular in his time and still are today, but he had financial and personal difficulties all through his life. His mother died when he was young and he didnt get along with his step-mother so he left home aged 14; his first wife and three small children died; his second wife died;, his house burned down and then a third wife died, which prompted him to write the haiku:
Outliving them,
Outliving them all.
Ah, the cold!
But most of his haiku are about nature, specifically animals: Issa wrote 54 haiku on the snail, 15 on the toad, nearly 200 on frogs, about 230 on the firefly, more than 150 on the mosquito, 90 on flies, over 100 on fleas and nearly 90 on the cicada, making a total of about one thousand verses. His haiku are known for their wry humour. Here are some of my favourites:
Goes out,
comes back
the love life of a cat.
Mosquito at my ear
does he think
Im deaf?
No doubt about it,
the mountain cuckoo
is a crybaby.
(This one made me think of Miss Vickery)
Even with insects
some can sing,
some cant.
And lastly, how I often feel at this time of year:
New Year’s Day
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.
