Selected by
Susumu Takiguchi, UK
When leaves change colour, we pick from among the carpet of fallen leaves the ones we love. Likewise, I pick haiku from among many. Some may live as pressed leaves. Others may go on decaying. But they are all beautiful fallen leaves. ‘Shu-i-shu’ is a Japanese literary term. Meaning gleanings, it used to be chosen for the title of anthologies of those poems which escaped a first anthology.
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Poets featured in this issue:
James W. Hackett, US
Stanford Forrester, US
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James W. Hackett, US
From: The Zen Haiku and Other Zen Poems, James W. Hackett, Japan Publications, Inc., 1983, ISBN 0-87040-533-0 (Completely revised and enlarged edition of The Way of Haiku: An Anthology of Haiku Poems)
Searching on the wind,
the hawk's cry...
is the shape of its beak.
Come, lie in this stream...
all the sun of summer gone
is within its flow.
Deep within the stream
the huge fish lie motionless,
facing the current.
Look, last night's wind
has set the whole garden ablaze
with bougainvillea !
Butterfly's splendor
folds into a tall silence
upon the flower.
All of a sudden
autumn clings to the window...
and then disappers.
A bitter morning:
sparrows sitting together
without any necks.
Wintry wind now sweeps
the trees, touching the same leaves
never... and again.
Beside a new grave...
burdened with the crushing weight
of ungiven love.
A distant dog
is adding another shade of gray
to the morning.
Viewing new snow...
the shape of my loneliness,
every winter breath.
Melting sun... one by one
boughs of the cedar spring back
into its contour.
Such a humble bloom
on the ivy, and yet see
how it draws the bees !
God must have been
felling very frivolous
when He created the cat.
Cricket chews the grass
till it starts to give way, then
wings to another.
Wherever I look
within this blue summer wind,
I can find a seed.
The more sparrow climbs
toward the top of that reed —
the lower he gets.
The dreaded thistle,
for all of its many spines,
is a host to bugs.
A roaring waterfall:
eucalyptus trees tossing
the summer wind.
Now at journey's end,
circling the shallow stream...
years of open sea.
Gradually moving
the whole forest to silence,
an enchanted bird.
Need friends ever speak?
There's tea to taste, and windsong
from the garden trees.
Gnats come as a cloud,
and then spread out over
the coolness of the pool.
Reading this sutra,
I suddenly began to laugh...
without knowing why.
Just in from the rain,
my wet shaggy dog smells
like fifty dry ones !
The spider spins round
and round his ancient design,
bound for the center.
Time after time
caterpillar climbs this broken stem
— then probes beyond.
The long drop of dew
must have been held by my
attention alone !
The puppy's wonder
tilts his head, first to one side
and then the other.
A gull flying low
above a deserted beach,
racing its shadow.
Sweltering city...
echoing through an alley,
the slaps of hopscotch.
Breaking gray pavement
in a hard world, full of words:
a flowering weed.
My reflection now
swept by wind, I see nothing
but a constant flow...
Waking... amid grasses
and wild flowers bright with dew:
cold mountain sunrise.
The grasshopper's game:
to light on the tip of a grass,
then ride out the sway !
An old spider web
low above the forest floor,
sagging full of seeds.
A heavy night fog
has so silenced the city,
each light seems a friend.
A yellow streetlight
haloing ... into a gray
drifting nothingness.
Lights give depth to this fog...
some are bright, and others dim,
all of them lonely.
Free at last, the fly
flew out the window — and then
right back in again.
Seaweed in the tide
takes the shape of each swell
until stilled by sand.
Moving slowly through
and old, abandoned beach house...
shadows of the moon.
Buildings hide the sky
and pavement the earth, and yet
this weed grew to seed.
The sunset fading,
I turn around toward home...
a huge, saffron moon !
Empty the night seems,
and yet endless flights of birds
calligraph the moon.
In a darkened room,
a spider at the window,
spinning with the moon.
A dry leaf, tumbling
along the pavement ... an edge
to the summer air.
A berry splashes,
then moves across the shallows
by fits and starts.
Never more alone
the eagle, than now surrounded
by screaming crows.
The Jesus bug
skating over the stream's surface
leaves no wake behind.
One leaf on the stream
suddenly whirls round and round,
and then vanishes.
Bug lights on the leaf,
takes a wild ride through the rapids,
then flies away.
All of a sudden,
every bird becomes silent...
the sound of fall.
Drifting whitely
over a deserted beach...
the sound of surf.
Gulls rise as a cloud
and fly out to sea, then turn back,
all but a few...
That gull in the surf,
though deluged by breaking waves,
always reappears !
The lofty eagle,
lowered by hunger, becomes
the prey of gulls.
The sparrow jiggles
the spider web with his bill,
then watchingly waits.
City lineliness...
dancing with a gusty wind:
yesterday's news.
Rubble everywhere...
except for a flight of stairs
ending in the air.
Clearly heard within
the meadowlark's flight of song:
the sound of the spring.
As the first drops of
rain begin, the gentle sound
of the spring leaves...
How drab this rock seems,
and yet what hidden color
each raindrop reveals...
All the more beautiful
dewed by rain, the bloom
of your laughing smile !
Whatever the bird,
the nestling's cry of hunger
always sounds the same.
Now, each wisp of hair
that I comb out of my dog
ends up in a nest.
Now that I have freed
the butterfly from the web,
I feel uneasy.
The puppy's panic !
The beetle she's been sniffing
just climbed on her nose.
The eagle struggles,
into flight, but once aloft —
seldom flaps his wings.
The cantankerous crow
sleeps in a nest that's nothing
but broken branches.
In Japan
The monastery dog
bids the stranger welcome
with wagging silence.
The struggling ant
is suddenly unburdened
by his winged cargo !
A forest of fog —
yet the eagle flies, squawking
his way to the sea !
Level web mystery:
solved, by seeing the spider
that rides on the wind !
A first drop of rain
rolls around upon the leaf,
finds and edge, then clings.
Crumbling with rust
upon a deserted shore...
the weight of war.
Hosing the jasmine, —
scores of startled white spiders
bail out of its blooms !
The gust of wind
that is trying on that shirt
needs a larger size !
As twilight tolls,
petals fall into the dark stream
revealing its flow.
In this empty web,
left by a will to be free:
a pair of small wings.
This flat skipping stone
kept for tis color, appears drab
without the stream...
Let the campfire die —
we can better see the summit,
this night of starts !
Nothing but mountains...
and yet with every wind,
the smell of the sea.
Grown tired of being
many men, I live now
as that soaring bird.
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Stanford Forrester, US
daylight...
no one notices
the firefly
meditation hall...
an ant carries away
my cocentration
just within my reach —
the lightning bug
turns off
autumn wind —
only the stink bug
clinging to me
winter wind —
the length
of the homeless man's beard
new year's day —
not liking my fortune
I buy another
* * *
summer afternoon...
the first drops of rain
on my bare feet
* * *
