Kobayashi Issa
Look, don't kill that fly!
It is making a prayer to you
By rubbing its hands and feet.
All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
killing mosquitoes.
Writing shit about new snow
for the rich
is not art.
Don't worry, spiders,
I keep house
casually.
A cuckoo sings
to me, to the mountain,
to me, to the mountain.
Asked how old he was,
the boy in the new kimono
stretched out all five fingers.
Ducks bobbing on the water—
are they also, tonight,
hoping to get lucky?
Having slept, the cat gets up,
yawns, goes out
to make love.
A huge frog and I,
staring at each other,
neither of us moves.
Children imitating cormorants
are even more wonderful
than cormorants.
His death poem:
A bath when you're born,
a bath when you die,
how stupid.
The toad! It looks like
it could belch
a cloud.
