Just beyond the gate,
A neat yellow hole-
Someone pissed in the snow
This poem by Issa in my mind epitomises part of my fascination with Japan. Haiku was my first experience of Japanese culture and it’s heritage, we were taught about it in an English lesson, the structure of it appealed to me. It’s way of presenting a complex idea in such a rigid and simple structure enthralled me and so when as part of an exercise I had to attempt to produce my own I jumped at the chance as poetry like photography is a passion of mine. The results of my attempts at haiku were simple such as:
The wolf howls at-
The moon, bright in the night sky,
Is still and silent.
Now while not on a par with Basho;, considered the greatest writer of haiku it follows the similar rules to the haiku that he wrote back in the 1600s such as:
Among moon gazers
at the ancient temple grounds
not one beautiful face
The beauty of these expressions to me lies in their simplicity and the frequent surprises in them, they are frequently reverential in tone if not content as the poem by Issa I started with shows., a poem which is transformed by it’s last line which uses a comical image. After all many people have pissed in the snow at some point although the unseen pisser in this poem is one of deliberate action as the hole in the snow he makes is neat rather than the usual result where people do things like write their name. In fact when the opportunity presents itself I think I will see how possible it is to piss into snow and leave a neat hole.