Kobayashi Issa
Not very anxious
to bloom,
my plum tree.
Translated by Robert Hass
This moth saw brightness
in a woman's chamber—
burnt to a crisp.
Visiting the graves,
the old dog
leads the way.
Under the image of Buddha
all these spring flowers
seem a little tiresome.
These sea slugs -
they just don't seem
Japanese.
Not knowing
it's a tub they're in
the fish cooling at the gate.
The man pulling radishes
pointed my way
with a radish.
The world of dew is, yes,
a world of dew,
but even so
That wren—
looking here, looking there.
You lose something?
The crow
walks along there
as if it were tilling the field.
What a strange thing!
to be alive
beneath cherry blossoms.
Pissing in the snow
outside my door—
it makes a very straight hole.
