Friday, September 05, 2008

roon the aul fowks hame -
leaves
haipin up




round the old folks home -
leaves
piling up

3 comments:

  1. Both a little sad and comforting at the same time. Ripe to lots of different readings.

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  2. Yeah; nice haiku. It's the autumn coming. May I borrow here one from Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, poem # 47:

    To the lonely house
    where the weeds, eight layers deep,
    have grown rank,
    not a soul can be seen --
    but autumn, at least, has come.

    (Yegyo Hoshi, Master of the Law Egyo, years not knows, tr. by Joshua S. Mostow.)

    How difficult it is to translate from Japanese, here is the same poem tr. by William N. Porter:

    My little temple stands alone,
    no other hut is near;
    No one will pass to stop and praise
    Its vine-grown roof, I fear,
    Now that the autumn's here.

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  3. a man will come
    in a dayglo orange jumpsuit
    to hoover them up

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