Haiku by Issa

 
Spring unfolds anew…
Now in my second childhood
Folly, Folly, too

Snails, spiders, fleas, mosquitoes, flies – these were among the favorite  subjects of the lay Buddhist priest, Kobayashi Issa, who lived from 1763-1828:

Climb Mount Fuji, O snail, but slowly, slowly. Don’t worry spiders, I keep house casually. For you too fleas, the night must be long it must be lonely. Mosquito at my ear Does it think I’m deaf? Come flies, have some rice. May you too enjoy a rich harvest. Like most haiku masters, Issa wrote poems about the seasons: The holes in the wall play the flute this autumn evening. The rooster’s comb droops listlessly… winter rain My tumble-down house just as it is… spring begins. Stitching together the short summer singing frogs. Issa did not have an easy life. He was born in a small village in central Japan, the son of a farmer. His mother died when he was two. He wrote this haiku about her: Mother I never knew, every time I see the ocean every time… His father remarried when Issa was eight, but his stepmother abused him so he left his small village in his late teens and went to the big city, Edo. There, he began to study haiku and donned monk’s robes. At age 27, he set out on ten years of wandering, a tradition with both Zen monks and haiku masters. He returned to the village of his birth in 1801 when his father became ill. Issa composed this haiku as he nursed his father for a month before his death: His sleeping form – I shoo away the flies today. There’s nothing more to do. Following his father’s wishes, Issa married a local girl named Kiku. He was 51. She was 27. They had a son who lived only a month, another son who lived only a year, and a daughter who died of smallpox after only a year. All this time, Issa composed haiku and also wrote a piece of prose called, “A Year in My Life.” In it, he described the death of his daughter, ending the section with a haiku that I discuss in my book: The world of dew is the world of dew and yet, and yet… Kiku then died after giving birth to another son who did not live out the year. Issa married two more times before his death at the age of 64. As was the custom with Zen monks, he composed a death poem: A bath when you’re born A bath when you die. Nonsense. Closing the door he drops off to sleep… snail. Why such careful consideration snail? All the baby spiders scatter to make a living. On the moonlit spider web an evening cicada. A flea jumps in the laughing Buddha’s mouth. Evening – in a big sake cup moon and a flea. My home where I even exhale mosquitoes. To the lullaby of mosquitoes a child sleeps. I’m going out flies, so relax make love. The winter fly I spare, the cat snatches.  Don’t kill that fly! Look – it’s wring it’s hands, wringing its feet.

Source:

http://www.howtobesick.com/HaikuIssa.html