tsuyu no yo wa
tsuyu no yo nagara
sari nagara
*
this world of dew
is a world of dew
and yet, and yet
Everything passes. This may be the first rule of life. The Japanese suggest that life is fleeting and it is in the world’s fleetingness that we see its beauty. We rejoice in the coming and going of things precisely because we know they will not last.
During his lifetime, Kobayashi Issa endured many hardships and experienced the deaths of parents, wives, and many infant sons and daughters. Through all of this, he continued to write simple poems about nature and little creatures. His poems are among the most loved haiku today. Here is Issa’s farewell poem:
gratitude for gifts—
even snow on my bedspread
a gift from the Pure Land
