“’cause the sun isn’t only sinking fast / every moon in our bodies make shining glass”

My current by-the-desk calendar is a monthly Japanese-woodblock-print-plus-haiku thing, and so far it has amused me so I guess it’s working. This month’s haiku is by Shiki, a Meiji-era poet who modernized both the haiku and tanka forms, often cited as Japan’s fourth haiku master:

sanzen no
haiku o etsushi
kaki futatsu

Three thousand haiku
I have read through, and now—
two persimmons!

(The woodblock is this sparrow hawk on a persimmon branch.) This is actually a pretty good translation, both on the literal level and for tone. The only padding not in the original is the “and now—” though the switch from past to present tense makes it partially inferable. However, there’s one missing bit of information that helps with appreciating the poem itself: Shiki was the editor of a (groundbreaking) haiku magazine—he’s been reading the slush pile. Break time!

There’s something to be learned here about the craft of translation.

---L.

Subject quote from Call It Dreaming, Iron & Wine.