Tuesday, 4 January 2011

Bashô's Frog


.

File:Wasserfrosch.jpg

Common Water Frog (Rana esculenta): photo by Holger Gröschl, 2003


古池や
蛙飛び込む
水の音



The old pond:
A frog jumps in,—
The sound of the water.




File:MatsuoBasyoSeika.jpg

Birthplace of Bashô Matsuo, Iga Province, Japan: photo by Ultratornio, 2005

Bashô (1644-1694): frog haiku, translated by Reginald Horace Blyth (1898-1964)
at

8 comments:

  1. STEPHEN RATCLIFFE4 January 2011 at 08:04

    Tom,

    Thanks for this green frog, the sound of water in pond, and Creeley's "persistent rain" ----


    1.4

    orange edge of sun behind black branches
    of trees, motion of green leaf on branch
    in foreground, sound of waves in channel

    one thing is that, to be in
    words the relation to

    a gesture, coming across an
    area, point to staged

    silver of sunlight reflected in channel,
    white cloud in pale blue sky on horizon

    ReplyDelete
  2. Julia4 January 2011 at 08:08

    Yes, thank you, this helps :-)
    Lovely frog. He/she is proudly staring at us after dive into water, ¡splash!
    I remember one translation of Basho's haiku in which the last verse was something like this: splash, sound of water. But I don't remember if it was in Spanish or English (and I can't look up now ¡I have to work!)

    The ripple effect...Mmm. Who initiated it?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous4 January 2011 at 08:20

    This brightens this bright day. That frog feels like a friend. My copy of Basho is currently out of reach on a high shelf. Thank you for bringing it to me.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ed Baker4 January 2011 at 11:35

    so many frogs
    in one pond
    croaking

    old poet
    old frog
    old pond
    .....PLOP!

    far beyond sound frog leaps
    far beyond frog sound leaps

    Old Poet
    sitting beside the pond
    eating fried frogs' legs



    ( I jus cldn't resist... so much for my Knew Year's Resolution!!!!)

    ReplyDelete
  5. TC5 January 2011 at 00:17

    Sweet echoes, spreading ripples and bright reflections...


    That frog feels like a friend.

    (Indeed, then it must be one.)


    so many frogs
    in one pond
    croaking

    (Yes, here we all are.)


    sound of waves in channel
    silver of sunlight reflected in channel

    (Part of the frog's "world picture", too?)

    (And by the by, Steve, my indelible "frog memory" dates back to the great El Niño flood winter of '68-'69 in "pre-developed" Bo-Town, a vacant field on Nymph [!] Road, turned into a sea of frogs, a pond becoming a chorus of swelling song... )


    Which puts one in mind of...

    The ripple effect...Mmm. Who initiated it?

    I think that great initiator can only have been Dame Nature!

    ReplyDelete
  6. STEPHEN RATCLIFFE5 January 2011 at 08:30

    Tom,

    Yes, the frogs are out there, at it again, once it gets dark -- Nymph Road's "sea of frogs" is probably still there. . . .

    ReplyDelete
  7. TC5 January 2011 at 23:55

    ...and I think I can almost hear them singing... as the waves wash in...

    (No, back down to "earth" -- the present, clunk! -- that's just the whooshing-past of the late night traffic, again.)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ed Baker6 January 2011 at 04:26

    the "woosh" that I heard when camping in an Arizona
    desert
    just me & that ...sound-wave

    http://edbaker.maikosoft.com/shrike/26.html

    which led me to the ending of some Magnificent poem that I wrote but can't remember:


    after
    all

    it s
    only

    one
    wave


    (one of these daze I shall mmwemorize some-thing
    however, mere activities are precluded by my actions/reactions ...

    so, no Real "teacher" is needed...

    sort-of an "who's on first" (Abbott & Costello) kind of ....
    way ?)

    ReplyDelete