This World of Dew
THIS WORLD OF DEW
This world?
Moonlit dew
flicked from a crane's bill.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Seventy-one?
How long
can a dewdrop last?
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Dewdrops beading grass-blades
die before dawn;
may an untimely wind not hasten their departure!
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
This world of dew
is a dew-drop world indeed;
and yet, and yet...
—Kobayashi Issa, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Both victor and vanquished are
dewdrops, flashes of lightning
briefly illuminating the void.
—Ôuchi Yoaka, loose translation/interpretation of his jisei death poem by Michael R. Burch
My aging body:
a drop of dew
bulging at the leaf-cliff.
—Kiba, loose translation/interpretation of his jisei death poem by Michael R. Burch
As autumn deepens,
a butterfly sips
chrysanthemum dew.
—Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I wish I could wash
this perishing earth
in its shimmering dew.
—Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Like a lotus leaf's evaporating dew,
I vanish.
—Senryu, loose translation/interpretation of his jisei death poem by Michael R. Burch
Let us arise and go,
following the path of the clear dew.
—Fojo, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Farewell! I pass
away as all things do:
dew drying on grass.
—Banzan, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
My life appeared like dew
and disappears like dew.
All Naniwa was a series of dreams.
—Toyotomi Hideyoshi, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Let this body
be dew
in a field of wildflowers.
—Tembo, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Like dew glistening
on a lotus leaf,
so too I soon must vanish.
—Shinsui, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Dew-damp grass:
the setting sun's tears
— Yosa Buson, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
The dew-damp grass
weeps silently
in the setting sun
—Yosa Buson, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Dabbed with morning dew
and splashed with mud,
the melon looks wonderfully cool.
—Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
I thought I felt a dewdrop
plop
on my head
as I lay in bed!
—Masaoka Shiki, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Honeysuckle
blesses my knuckle
with affectionate dew
—Michael R. Burch
honeydew, honeydont
by michael r. burch
I sampled honeysuckle
and it made my taste buds buckle.
The Song of Amergin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I am the sea blast
I am the tidal wave
I am the thunderous surf
I am the stag of the seven tines
I am the cliff hawk
I am the sunlit dewdrop
I am the fairest of flowers
I am the rampaging boar
I am the swift-swimming salmon
I am the placid lake
I am the summit of art
I am the vale echoing voices
I am the battle-hardened spearhead
I am the God who inflames desire
Who knows the secrets of the unhewn dolmen
Who announces the ages of the moon
Who knows where the sunset settles
Marsh Song
by Michael R. Burch
Here there is only the great sad song of the reeds
and the silent herons, wraithlike in the mist,
and a few drab sunken stones, unblessed
by the sunlight these late sixteen thousand years,
and the beaded dews that drench strange ferns, like tears
collected against an overwhelming sadness.
Here the marsh exposes its dejectedness,
its gutted rotting belly, and its roots
rise out of the earth’s distended heaviness,
to claw hard at existence, till the scars
remind us that we all have wounds, and I ...
I have learned again that living is despair
as the herons cleave the placid, dreamless air.
Canticle
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 15
Misty morning sunlight hails the dawning of new day;
dreams drift into drowsiness before they fade away.
Dew drops on the green grass echo splendors of the sun;
the silence lauds a songstress and the skillful song she's sung.
Among the weeping willows the mist clings to the leaves;
and, laughing in the early light among the lemon trees,
there goes a brace of bees!
Describing You
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16
How can I describe you?
The fragrance of morning rain
mingled with dew
reminds me of you;
the warmth of sunlight
stealing through a windowpane
brings you back to me again.
Morning
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 14
It was morning
and the bright dew drenched the grasses
like tears the trembling lashes of my lover;
another day had come.
And everywhere the flowers
were turning to the sun,
just as the night before
I had turned to the one
for whom my heart yearned.
It was morning
and the sun shone in the sky
like smoldering embers in the eyes of my lover—
another night gone by.
And everywhere the terraces
were refreshed by bright assurances
of the early-fallen rain
which had doused the earth
and morning’s birth
with their sweet refrain.
It was morning
and the bright dew drenched the grasses
like tears the trembling lashes of my lover;
another day had come.
Ivy
by Michael R. Burch
“Van trepando en mi viejo dolor como las yedras.” – Pablo Neruda
“They climb on my old suffering like ivy.”
Ivy winds around these sagging structures
from the flagstones
to the eave heights,
and, clinging, holds intact
what cannot be saved of their loose entrails.
Through long, blustery nights of dripping condensation,
cured in the humidors of innumerable forgotten summers,
waxy, unguent,
palely, indifferently fragrant, it climbs,
pausing at last to see
the alien sparkle of dew
beading delicate sparrowgrass.
Coarse saw grass, thin skunk grass, clumped mildewed yellow gorse
grow all around, and here remorse, things past,
watch ivy climb and bend,
and, in the end, we ask
if grief is worth the gaps it leaps to mend.
Keywords/Tags: dew, dewdrop, haiku, jisei, zen, time, transience, mortality, impermanence, death, life, age, art
Copyright © Michael Burch | Year Posted 2021
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