In old hokku, falling and fallen leaves are generally a winter subject. But where I live, as well as in many other parts of North America, they are generally more appropriate to deep autumn.
Ryōkan wrote:
The wind
Brings enough for a fire —
Fallen leaves.
Have you noticed that old hokku often put the main subject of a verse last? That gives us a kind of “wondering” buildup to the answer: The wind brings enough what for a fire? Then the answer — fallen leaves.
Buson does the same thing in another hokku:
Blown from the west,
They pile up in the east —
Fallen leaves.
To remember this technique, we might call it the “What is it?” technique. In the first first, we ask “What is it the wind brings enough of?” Answer: Fallen leaves.
In the second we ask, “What is it that blows from the east and piles up in the west? Answer: Fallen leaves.
If you remember that, it will help you when an experience fits that technique.
Here is one of my very favorite hokku, by Gyōdai:
Falling leaves
Lie on one another;
Rain beats on rain.
Notice how this verse has a kind of parallelism reminiscent of old Chinese verse, and we can put the parts side by side like this for study:
Falling leaves lie on one another;
Rain beats on rain.
The first line has the subject fallen leaves and the action lie on one another.
The second line has the subject rain and the action beats on rain.
In hokku we want to avoid perfect parallelism in all things, so in this one the third line — comprising the entire second part of the parallelism — is shorter than the first part.
Ryūshi wrote
Stillness;
The sound of a bird walking
On fallen leaves.
That is the regular setting-subject-action hokku.
The setting is “stillness.”
The subject is “the sound of a bird.”
The action is “walking on fallen leaves.”
Many old hokku are about the sound of one thing or another. You will recall that the best-known of all hokku — Bashō’s Old Pond verse (a spring hokku), has “the sound of water.”
I will end today with another good hokku by Taigi, very expressive of the autumn season and its changes:
Sweeping them up,
Then not sweeping them up —
Fallen leaves.
At first the falling leaves are few, and easily removed. But as autumn deepens they fall in ever greater numbers, until finally one just gives up and lets the season follow its course.
From this we learn that hokku is not simply a “moment in time,” but rather an expression of time and change.
And do not overlook that Taigi’s hokku also fits the “what is it?” technique: What is that that we first sweep up, then do not sweep up? Fallen leaves.
David
HOKKU 