haiku

In the coolness
of the empty sixth-month sky...
the cuckoo's cry.

The taste
of rain
—Why kneel?

The low yellow
moon above the
Quiet lamplit house.

Drinking my tea
Without sugar-
No difference.

The sparrow shits
upside down
--ah! my brain & eggs

Mayan head in a
Pacific driftwood bole
--Someday I'll live in N.Y.

Looking over my shoulder
my behind was covered
with cherry blossoms.

Winter Haiku
I didn't know the names
of the flowers--now
my garden is gone.

I slapped the mosquito
and missed.
What made me do that?

Reading haiku
I am unhappy,

Birds singing
in the dark
—Rainy dawn.

Spring:
A hill without a name
Veiled in morning mist.

The beginning of autumn:
Sea and emerald paddy
Both the same green.

The winds of autumn
Blow: yet still green
The chestnut husks.

A flash of lightning:
Into the gloom
Goes the heron's cry.


Translated by Geoffrey Bownas And Anthony Thwaite

The wind
Undecided
Rolls a cigarette of air

The mute girl talks:
It is art's imperfection.
This impenetrable speech.

The motor car is truly launched:
Four martyrs' heads
Roll under the wheels.

Ah! a thousand flames, a fire,
The light, a shadow!
The sun is following me.

A feather gives to a hat
A touch of lightness:
The chimney smokes.

In a week or ten days
the snow and ice
will melt from Cemetery Road.

I'm coming! Don't move!

Once again it is April.
Today is the day
we would have been married
twenty-six years.

I finished with April
halfway through March.

You think that their
dying is the worst
thing that could happen.

Then they stay dead.

Will Hall ever write
lines that do anything
but whine and complain?

In April the blue
mountain revises
from white to green.

Waking in the night;
the lamp is low,
the oil freezing.



It has rained enough
to turn the stubble on the field
black.




Winter rain
falls on the cow-shed;
a cock crows.




The leeks
newly washed white,-
how cold it is!




The sea darkens;
the voices of the wild ducks
are faintly white.





Ill on a journey;
my dreams wander
over a withered moor.