After the Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa
New Year’ s morning —
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.
A huge frog and I
staring at each other,
neither of us moves.
This moth saw brightness
in a woman’ s chamber —
burned to a crisp.
Robert Hass
Between the Wars
When I ran, it rained. Late in the afternoon —
midsummer, upstate New York, mornings I wrote,
read Polish history, and there was a woman
whom I thought about; outside the moody, humid
American sublime — late in the afternoon,
toward sundown, just as the sky was darkening,
the light came up and redwings settled in the cattails.
They were death's idea of twilight, the whole notes
of a requiem the massed clouds croaked
above the somber fields. Lady of eyelashes,
do you hear me? Whiteness, otter's body,
Interrupted Meditation
Little green involute fronds of fern at creekside.
And the sinewy clear water rushing over creekstone
of the palest amber, veined with a darker gold,
thinnest lines of gold rivering through the amber
like — ah, now we come to it. We were not put on earth,
the old man said, he was hacking into the crust
of a sourdough half loaf in his vehement, impatient way
with an old horn-handled knife, to express ourselves.
I knew he had seen whole cities leveled: also
that there had been a time of shame for him, outskirts
Iowa City: Early April
This morning a cat — bright orange — pawing at the one patch of new grass in the sand-and tanbark-colored leaves.
And last night the sapphire of the raccoon's eyes in the beam of the flashlight.
He was climbing a tree beside the house, trying to get onto the porch, I think, for a wad of oatmeal
Simmered in cider from the bottom of the pan we'd left out for the birds.
Misery and Splendor
Summoned by conscious recollection, she
would be smiling, they might be in a kitchen talking,
before or after dinner. But they are in this other room,
the window has many small panes, and they are on a couch
embracing. He holds her as tightly
as he can, she buries herself in his body.
Morning, maybe it is evening, light
is flowing through the room. Outside,
the day is slowly succeeded by night,
succeeded by day. The process wobbles wildly
Selected Haiku by Issa
Don’ t worry, spiders,
I keep house
casually.
New Year’ s Day —
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.
The snow is melting
and the village is flooded
with children.
Goes out,
comes back —
the love life of a cat.
Winged and Acid Dark
A sentence with “dappled shadow” in it.
Something not sayable
spurting from the morning silence,
secret as a thrush.
The other man, the officer, who brought onions
and wine and sacks of flour,
the major with the swollen knee,
wanted intelligent conversation afterward.
Having no choice, she provided that, too.
Potsdamerplatz, May 1945.