Category: Haiku and Beyond

Although this isn’t one of my favorite Su Tung-p’o poems from the “Middle Years: 1074-1079” and “First Exile:1080 to 1083,” it does represent one strain in his poetry, not surprising when you consider that this poem was written in the third year of his “exile.”

RAIN AT THE TIME OF COLD FOOD (1082)

Since coming to Huang-chou,
this is my third Cold Food festival.
Each year I hate to see spring go,
but it goes anyway, heeding no regrets.
On top of that, this year we’re pestered with rain;
two months now it’s been bleak as fall.
I lie and listen to cherry apple blossoms,
pale pink snow getting dirty in the mud.
Of forces that steal things away in the dark,
the most powerful comes in the middle of the night,
as though a young man were to take to bed sick,
then rise from his sickbed to find his hair gone gray.

COLD FOOD, which comes 105 days after the winter solstice, is a spring festival celebrated by a meal of various foods eaten cold.

Lines 7-12. The lines in which the rain carrying off the cherry apple blossoms is likened to a thief in the night allude to the passage in Cliian Tzu Sec. 6: “You hide your boat in the ovine and your fish net in the swamp and tell yourself they will be safe. But in the middle of the night a strong man shoulders them and carries them off, and in your stupidity you don’t know why it happened.”

Of course I’ve never been “exiled” but I’ve certainly been “pestered with rain” and can identify with “two months now it’s been bleak as fall” since we’ve just gone through a week without rain and haven’t managed much more than two hours of sunshine in that entire span.

And there are certainly days lately when I’ve felt “as though a young man were to take to bed sick,/ then rise from his sickbed to find has hair gone gray.” It’s a common complaint with people my age. Every day is a struggle to hold onto what you’ve long taken for granted.

I’ve been reading Selected Poems of Su Tung-p’o translated by Burton Watson and have just finished the section entitled “Part One: Early Years (1059-1073). It’s a thoroughly enjoyable read, but it’s hard to pick out one poem as representative, particularly since Su Tung-p’o writes poems about so many different subjects.

Considering the present economy, though, this one particularly struck me:

Lament of the Farm Wife of Wu (1072)

Rice this year ripens so late!
We watch, but when will frost winds come?
They come – with rain in bucketfuls;
the harrow sprouts mold, the sickle rusts.
My tears are all cried out, but rain never ends;
it hurts to see yellow stalks flattened in the mud.
We camped in a grass shelter a month by the fields;
then it cleared and we reaped the grain, followed the wagon home,
sweaty; shoulders sore, carting it to town –
the price it fetched, you’d think we came with chaff.
We sold the ox to pay taxes, broke up the roof for kindling;
we’ll get by for a time, but what of next year’s hunger?
Officials demand cash now – they won’t take grain;
the long northwest border tempts invaders.
Wise men fill the court – why do things get worse?
I’d be better off bride to the River Lord!

Line 16. “Bride to the River Lord.” In ancient times it was the custom each year to sacrifice a young girl as a “bride” to the River Lord, the god of the Yellow River, by placing her on a bed and letting her float down the river until the bed capsized and she drowned.

I’m a city boy and always have been, but having once been married to the daughter of a wheat farmer I’m all too aware of how dependent farmers are on the whims of the weather. And I know from limited experience just how hard harvest is — with machinery — though it’s hard to imagine what it must have been like in 1072 in China.

It seems like the more things change the more they stay the same. Doesn’t it? It’s hard for us to imagine the kind of grinding poverty these farmers endured; perhaps we need to, though. It will give us some perspective on what we are enduring, which is not to say that there aren’t people who feel exactly like the farmer’s wife did over a thousand years ago.

I’ve been reading One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryōkan translated by John Stevens, and I’ll have to admit that my biggest complaint is simply that the book, at 85 pages, is too short. If I’d looked at in a bookstore rather than ordering it from Amazon, I doubt I would have paid $12.95 for it.

That said, I do like many of the poems. In fact, I have even ordered another book with a larger selection of Ryōkan’s poems, one I’ll review later.

My favorite poems are probably concrete ones like this

After a night of rain, water covers the village path.
This morning the thick grass by my hut is cool.
In the window, distant mountains the color of blue-green jade.
Outside, a river flows like shimmering silk.
Under a cliff near my hut, I wash out my sore ear with pure spring water.
In the trees, cicadas recite their fall verse.
I had prepared my robe and staff for a walk,
But the quiet beauty keeps me here.

that resonate with my own feelings. Of course, you already knew that I often find my yard as appealing as Nisqually, Belfair or even Point Defiance if you look at the relative number of shots I take in my own yard. Sitting quietly on the front porch watching the hummingbirds dart hither and yon is actually one of my favorite endeavors.

But I also like several of Ryōkan’s more abstract poems that remind us that he was a Buddhist monk:

BUDDHA is your mind
And the Way goes nowhere.
Don’t look for anything but this.
If you point your cart north
When you want to go south,
How will you arrive?

I don’t know about arriving at enlightenment, but I love the last three lines. I wish I’d known this poem when I was teaching!

Although most of Ryōkan’s poems included in the colllection are not haiku, the last section does include several haiku like this one

What is the heart of this old monk like?
A gentle wind
Beneath the vast sky.

that seems as good as any I’ve read anywhere.

I’ve finally finished Mako Euda’s Basho and His Interpreters, at least a first reading, because there’s a lot more to learn, particularly concepts of Japanese literature, than I could ever learn on a first reading. It’s the kind of book that you could come back to repeatedly and you’d still never master all the concepts introduced.

This book, with supplemental readings to flesh out literary concepts, could easily serve as a college text for a quarter-long class. I think I’ve noted before that I find it more difficult to sit down and read page after page of haiku than I do longer poems. There is so much packed into seventeen syllables that it’s hard to read poem after poem without taking a break between poems.

It’s impossible to accurately convey the book with four samples, but hopefully I’ve inspired some readers to check out the book, either by checking it out of your library or buying a copy. It’s as good a book of haiku as I’ve ever read.

Of course, as much as I appreciate the discussion of Japanese literature, I read the book for the poetry, not the literary criticism. I love a simple poem like this

housecleaning day-
hanging a shelf at his own home
a carpenter

susuhaki / wa / ono / ga / tana / tsuru / daiku / kana
year-end-cleaning / as-for / self /’s / shelf / hang / carpenter / kana

NOTE

In preparation for the New Year, the Japanese traditionally cleaned their houses on the thirteenth of the lunar twelfth month. Translated into the Gregorian calendar, that day in 1694 was January 8.

COMMENTARY

Normally a carpenter is so busy in working at other people’s houses that he would do nothing at his own home. But on the day of the year-end cleaning, he cannot keep his eyes closed: he is repairing a broken shelf in his house. Basho took note of a happening unnoticed by other poets. -Donto

By describing a relaxed carpenter performing the rare role of a family man on the annual housecleaning day, the poem creates the congenial atmosphere of a common household during the busy year-end period. The poet, drawing on a happening in ordinary life, has produced an exemplary poem that displays karumi. – Kon

This carpenter had always wanted to improve and beautify his house. He had been simply too busy, too tired, and consequently too lazy to do so. But this day he was able to stay at home all day long, and that is why he began to work on the shelf. The scene has humor, yet it also shows an ordinary man trying hard to get on with his life. For that reason, we cannot regard the situation as only a laughing matter. There is something human and warm, something redolent of the common man, that underlies the poem and adds a touch of pathos. This 1S another of the karumi poems Basho wrote in his last years. -Imoto

that reminds us just how little human nature has changed over time.

After you’ve spent a day earning your living fixing other people’s homes, the last thing you want to do is spend the night fixing your own home.

When I was teaching the last thing I wanted to do was come home and write something for a web page or even go through another batch of photos to share with others. Teaching gave me the skills needed to improve my own writing and photography, but left me with little desire to practice those skills.