Mantras, prayers, songs, sonnets, poems, hymns… and … there’s always…haiku. Yes, Haiku…Whatever works as one of my teachers (in yoga, yes, yoga teacher) used to say.
If a mantra works, what then do you make of Haiku ? Like a song stuck in your head – The following poem chants the aforementioned haiku…
釣鐘（つりがね）にとまりねむる胡蝶 （こてふ）かな
与謝蕪村
“TSURIGANE-NI-TOMARI-NEMURU-KOTEFU-KANA” (5-6-5 not 5-7-5…heresy?)
| “On the (huge one ton) temple bell, a moon-moth, folded into sleep, sits so still.”
Buson (1716-84) Translation just does not do justice – and that’s typically the case in comparative literature world. It never does unless merely a technical manual. Out of context, translated work nearly always betrays THE original ever so slightly, even if the text is translated by the most qualified… word for word translation will not do… AND as with most anything, original at its authentic expression of the creator, is of course ultimately the best… but that does not mean we give up on making the fruitless attempts and valiant efforts to introduce and share what is so amazing – a microcosm, a world of wonder contained in so few words… reminding us that, at times, less is … more. |
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Japan
Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.
It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.
I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.
I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.
I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.
And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.
It’s the one about the one-ton temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,
and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.
When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.
When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.
And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,
and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.
