A Newly Discovered "Bashōic" Haiku
Looking for
a wedge to force into the afternoon, sort of split it in two. Boredom creeping
in. Too cold to go for a swim, & if I read or watch tv I'll just go to
sleep in the chair. Driving's the answer, that old foot down flat to the floor
routine, out & about, Steppenwolf forever.
Decide to
take Bashō along for the ride – he hasn't been the same ever since he read
William Gibson's last four books in the one sitting & realized the old
Japan he knew & loved no longer existed. A little stir-crazy lately, so
seeing bucolic might stop his melancholy.
We head
south, following the backroads, or at least those that are sealed. Sine waves
of fast-braking tyre rubber staining the bitumen. Pick up the vibe but don't
try to add to it. Instead
stop
somewhat sedately at the lagoon where the black swans are, get out, smoke a
cigarette as we watch a couple of eagles ride the thermals above the water.
Lower down
a heron stands on a fallen tree trunk until it gets bored by the lack of fish
& flies away. Bashō watches it, flicks his dying cigarette towards where it
was. Doesn't look at me. Says:
Fuck this nature shit!
Let's go home, watch anime
on cable tv.
urban transit
How to work
out
what to in-
clude? The
selection
wasn't
yours
in the
first place—just
things that
happened
along a bus
route
you just
happened to
live on.
Never
caught the
bus. Some-
times heard
it go
by,
sometimes
watched it
disappearing
into
the
not-too-far
distance.
Close enough
to see that
there
was no-one
in the
backseat
telling the
driver to
wait, to
let you catch
up, to let
you get on.
A littoral translation
As if
frozen,
that
moment when
the
river is /
between
the tides.
Mud
meters out
from
the
mangroves. The
rocks
exposed. A single
pelican
near the other
bank,
reluctant to
move, to
relieve
the surface
tension.
Mark Young
is the editor of Otoliths, lives
in a small town in North Queensland in Australia, & has been publishing
poetry for more than fifty-five years. His work has been widely anthologized,
& his essays & poetry translated into a number of languages. A new
collection of poems, Bandicoot habitat,
has recently come out from gradient books of Finland.