First snow of the year
The home village appears
Through the hole in the wall
(Issa)

Sometimes I think that haiku are very similar to this pinhole in the shoji paper, which the Japanese used instead of the window glass. If you glimpse at the window, the hole is hardly noticeable, but if you do notice it and take a closer look ... you can see a lot of things you haven't paid attention to before. For example, a home village, like in Issa's haiku, or a magical world behind the fireplace, like in "Pinocchio".
The below haiku by Alexei Jidkov can help to open this door to childhood:

Left by the window
A teddy bear looks
At the Big Bear

Even if you took just a quick look at this poem, you could not help smiling at the way the author saw the Accidental Oneness of the toy bear and the constellation. As many haiku aim at this, it attracts attention immediately. This accidental oneness is so clear and apparent, that if one does not make an effort to pause and stay with this poem for a little while, one might feel an urge to pass this understandable and seemingly simple haiku. Same happened to me - I passed this haiku many times, each time with a warm smile. One day, however, I decided to take it along for a walk in the woods. It seemed to me that the owner of this teddy-bear used to do the same - took the toy along everywhere - to the breakfast table, to bed, until one evening when they sat down side by side near the window. Perhaps the kid was watching the fireworks or the snowfall, or was simply waiting for mum...but what happened next? What made the child leave his toy alone by the window?

One can't help sympathizing with the speechless soul of this little fluffy being, who used to be someone's best friend and suddenly became just a toy left behind on the window-sill. The teddy bear faces the sky - the kid had placed it this way, so that it would be able to see what was going on outside. The sky gets darker, the stars come out... and an author, whose eyes can easily link the stars into constellations, draws two more lines - between the teddy bear and the Big Bear... between the human heart and a little fluffy thing left by the window. These two distances are much shorter than they may look at first - in this laconic haiku, the spiritual distance shrinks to the size of a dot ("the hole in the wall"), that unveils another world, where a toy teddy bear, maybe just for a moment, could find consolation from the heavenly Bear.

**
The Japanese poets considered continuity and following the traditions in literature to be very important. The allusions often used in poems even gave birth to a new literary technique - honkadori. One poet, using a quote from another poet's verse, creates his or her own poem, thus elaborating on the borrowed topic, sometimes even changing the mood or the meaning of the original verse. The poets usually borrowed the theme, or lexicon, or phraseology, or the poetical style from the original poem.

snowflakes swirl
but each one falls
on its own place
(Marcel March)

When I read this haiku by Marcel for the first time, it reminded me of the haiku by Basho

So many flowers,
and each is different -
their heroism
(Basho)

I do not know whether the author meant it to be so, but the connection between these two haiku separated by hundreds of years is apparent.
"No matter how small a thing is, it follows its own Way, and therefore it is equal to other things, even to those which live much longer, not like a mayfly, but for hundreds of years, like a pine. They are equal, because each has its own purpose, its own mission. Every thing is free by its nature, and so is every moment." (T.L. Grigoriev "Born in the Japanese beauty"). Each moment is unique and free, so are the snowflakes. They are very light and, therefore, do not fall straight down, but swirl, change direction, fly sideways, ascend again...but each and every one of them, however small, will sooner or later find its own place on the Earth. Let alone us - people...


**
Until nowadays, both kids and adults in Japan enjoy playing some sort of a poetic lotto: the tanka from the famous anthology "One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets" split in two parts, are put down on cards, and shuffled. The players take turns and randomly pick one card to try and complete the tanka by heart. The Japanese know their poetry very well, which is something to take pride of. It feels really nice when you read a haiku, and it is not only good and memorable in its own right, but also follows a long poetic tradition. When I read the below poem for the first time, I immediately felt that it is not a stand alone verse, but that it is connected to all the poetry of the genre it is written in.

love ending,
winter beginning -
smell of chrysanthemum
(Kamome)

It reminds me of the haiku by Issho

My eyes,
which had seen all, came back,
Back to the white chrysanthemums

A chrysanthemum is a symbolic flower for the Japanese - symbol of the nation, symbol of the emperor, symbol of stamina, persistence and longevity. According to a Japanese legend, the dewdrops collected from the chrysanthemums prolong life. Chrysanthemums are in their full bloom in autumn, when the other flowers are killed by the first cold spells. In the modern flower language, particularly in the European countries (as well as in some countries in the East), chrysanthemum, however, is a symbol of sorrow and grief.
The appreciation of Kamome's haiku can be different depending on how one reads the first two lines.
1) What is described in the first two lines happens at the same time. As the autumn departs, the love goes too... Emptiness, nakedness, cold... The notes taken by the nature and the soul in unison are complemented by the third one - the smell of chrysanthemum. The third line of this poem has it all - the cold morning freshness, clearness of the autumn sky and the smell of the forthcoming snowfall... This third line indeed completes the accord. The sorrow and the loss now become the integral and organic part of the life's harmony.
2) What is described in the first two lines happens at different times. The scent of chrysanthemums is perceived by the author most strongly on two occasions - when the winter comes and when the love leaves. Not long before the winter, when these strong flowers are about to be covered by the first snow, the gardener smells the chrysanthemums more often to be able to remember their scent better. The same scent greets him again when he comes back to them after a long break, maybe after love has gone...
My eyes, had seen all and came back to the chrysanthemums...
The transient is of a particular value in the Japanese poetry. Appreciation of the ephemeral beauty is especially strong in its duality: enjoyment of the beauty and sadness caused by its soon loss. The picture painted by Kamome with just a few strokes of the brush contains a lot, one just needs to take a close look.


**
Morning walk;
no footprints in the snow-
but those left behind.
(Paul Cooper)

We can see several layers of meaning in this poem too. The first one - real, tangible, expressed through the natural phenomenon and an every day activity - a morning walk. The second is internal, existential, like a bud that opens and reaches out to the person who notices it and bends forward to smell... The understanding of this second meaning comes to the reader at the end of the third line.
A night sleep sorts out everything that happened a day before; every morning is a chance for a fresh start. The only pity is that in the evening we often find ourselves in the same place we were the previous night...
We always, however, end up in the place we were heading to. We are not tied to any particular path, because everything is always ahead of us, regardless of what has been already left behind. Wherever we choose to go will be our way. The snowflake's "own place" at the end of the fall is not the same as the one at the beginning, this "own place" is always changing until the reflection of the snowflake and the snowflake itself become one. And even then, the wind can lift the snowflake again in the air... The past determines our way only if we let it do so. It's in our power to stop being a little particle and to continue our journey in accordance with our wishes. In order to do this we need, however, to stop and to look behind, as the person in this haiku did. Just a few deft touches, nothing more ... - and the feeling of eternity overwhelms us.

As an old saying goes: "Those who can walk, do not leave the traces". Another one says: "It is easy to walk without leaving traces, it is difficult to walk, without touching the ground".


**
Paul Cooper calls his five-line poems waka - "Japanese song". The term waka appeared in the Heian era and became the name for the "high" court poetry as opposed to kanshi - Chinese poems. That's how these poems were called until the end of the XIX century, when a term tanka emerged. Though waka and tanka are almost synonyms, waka is more suitable to describe the genre, in which Paul writes. Paul's poems, deep in meaning, have a classic structure and are usually divided into two connected parts. Yojo - the surplus meaning (something beyond the words) - can be strongly felt in Paul's poems.

What I did not say
Is stronger than what I said

Sometimes, I think that I hold an old parchment with waka written on it, not the verses of the poet who lives in our time

Too soon for sunrise
where the moon remains hidden;
enveloped in mist -
all that remains of the night,
the flickering candle flame.
(Paul Cooper)

In order to convey personal feelings the words have to be chosen in such a way, that one can intuitively find the gate that opens the world outside the boundaries of these words., In Japan, various attempts to express inexpressible gave definitions to several "categories" of the beauty - yugen, sabi, wabi. Daisetz T. Suzuki, writing about the Japanese traditions in his book "Zen and Japanese Culture" says that yugen is a quick glance on the eternal phenomenon.
Even without knowing the meaning of all these Japanese terms, we feel the delicate elusiveness in this waka by Paul. We do not know why the candle is still burning and whose way it used to lit - maybe the way of the poet, or of the philosopher deeply in thoughts, or maybe of the inpatient lover... We can try to guess, if we plunge deep into the atmosphere of the poem. It's not morning, yet the night is not over, the moon is in the mist, everything is quiet... only a candle, like a symbol of yang power, hidden in the still of the night, flickers... because of the breath, or maybe because of the light breeze. The beating heart of the twilight morning quietness.
Landscape painted in the first three lines is completed by the second part of the poem, in which a man is not mentioned, yet present - in this flickering spike of the candle. In the Japanese poetry, the moon symbolises both spiritual unity and romantic love. Every life is unique, we are all different and lonely, but in the same time we are all connected. In the moment described in this waka, the all-uniting moon is hidden in the mist, the sun has not yet risen, and loneliness (spiritual or romantic) is felt much stronger.
The elusiveness of this poem, its emotional subtext can be appreciated not only because we are able, based on our own experience, to complete the entire picture by seeing only a small detail, but also because the state of nature and state of soul can never be fully expressed in words. The words here are like the finger signs: they can only indicate the direction.
The intimate and the personal are conveyed here lexically through the words "enveloped", "mist", "hidden". The pivot of the last two lines completes the atmosphere of loneliness (the candle was burning all night long) and solitude, but also shows uneasiness and discomfort of the poem's character. In addition, there is a contrast between the moon, also a symbol of all eternal and unchangeable, and the flame, as something ever-changing and intangible, but resurrecting - like human life.
**

In the human realm,
where is this place called home?
Among the pines -
that spot where my head will rest
as the sun sets on distant slopes.
(Paul Cooper)

One can clearly see the sun, setting on the distant slopes, and the man putting his head to rest in the grass between two pines. This poem makes me think of pilgrims like Saigyo, Basho and Santoka.
Home is where you are, where your heart is. For some, home is a willow's shadow, or a cool place in a blooming garden. For some, home is a state of the soul. If you stay alone with nature long enough, a lot of things gradually become redundant. What remains are calmness, feeling of oneness with the world, confidence that every minute is spent right, whatever you do. The feeling of home is not without, it is within; it is a state of peace with self, wherever you are.

= Translated by the ULITKA =