A hokku by the female writer Chiyo-ni:
Coming to see –
In the forest is the heat
Of the forest.
It is an uncomfortably hot day and we raise our eyes to the line of trees, which look cool and inviting. But when we go there and enter among the trees, we find dry stillness and unmoving, stagnant air, and realize that the forest has its own kind of heat, and we have not found in it the relief we sought — just another kind of “hot.”
And a verse by Yayû, which, though hokku, has somewhat the flavor of senryû. I have modified it slightly for clarity:
Putting something on
At the sound of a visitor –
The heat!
Lounging with clothes removed because of the heat of summer, we are suddenly startled by the voice of an unexpected visitor, and we hurriedly put something on. Merely the act of doing so makes us irritably feel even hotter and more uncomfortable. That discomfort merges with the discomfort of the surprise of an unanticipated visitor.
The discomfited feeling of being surprised in our undress and our irritation at having to quickly make ourselves presentable expresses the human satire so common to senryû, but the overwhelming sensory presence of the heat of summer — the emphasis on the season and its character expressed in these actions — makes it hokku.
