There is not just a single way to translate a hokku from one language to another. Structurally, and in vocabulary, Japanese and English are very different. And English has considerable freedom in how one says a thing. This is very beneficial in composing English-language hokku.
Onitsura wrote a very simple and pleasant hokku. Such verses are characteristic of him at his best:
Aomugi ya hibari ga agaru are sagaru
Green-barley ya skylark ga rising is descending
Green barley;
The skylark rising
And falling.
But that is only one way in which the same verse may be presented. We could also do it as
Green barley;
The skylark ascends
And descends.
Or we could use my favorite,
Green barley;
The lark ascending
And descending.
Because of the various streams of language that flowed together to make modern English, we have such a range of options. “Rises and falls” uses Anglo-Saxon words; “ascending and descending” makes use of forms given by Latin. English is a very rich language in the variety with which we may speak and write, and we should take advantage of that in writing hokku. Our language in hokku should, however, remain simple and direct.
Remember, however, that the hokku I translate here are not presented merely for the pleasure of reading them. They are models to be used in learning how to compose original hokku. Do not expect the result of using such models to be immediately great. The practice is to familiarize you with the structure and patterns of hokku, not to give you instant success in wonderful verses.
We can take today’s hokku:
Green barley;
The lark ascending
And descending.
Remember that in using a model, we can substitute any or all of the elements, like this;
Green pastures;
The lark ascending
And descending
Or we can go farther:
Spring winds;
A kite rising
And falling.
Or even farther by adding an adjective;
The still pond;
Dark fish rising
And sinking.
One can see, as I said previously, the countless opportunities for writing new verse by using this method. And this is just one of a number of hokku patterns we may use.
Working from models — which as already mentioned is a very old and traditional practice in hokku — enables us to quickly learn how the elements of a hokku are assembled and varied. Then it becomes very easy for the student to write new hokku based on personal experience.
Another great benefit of writing in English is that the language — unlike old “hokku” Japanese — has punctuation. In composing hokku we should not be afraid of making good use of punctuation because it is a part of normal English. We should never write hokku without it, because each verse should not only have an internal “cut” to separate the short part from the longer part (the single line from the two “continuous” lines that form the other part of each verse) — it should also have ending punctuation. Sometimes there may even be a secondary internal pause in keeping with how we say things in English.
Blyth, for example, translated a spring verse by Issa like this:
Even on a small island,
A man tilling the field,
A lark singing above it.
He used three punctuation marks! The “cut” is the first comma at the end of the first line, and the second comma is merely a pause necessary for the right effect in English.
Let’s look closer at that verse:
Kojima ni mo hatake utsunari naku hibari
Little-island on even field tilling crying skylark
I would translate it as:
Even on the small island —
A field being tilled,
A skylark singing.
Issa sees spring everywhere. Not only on the mainland, but even on a small island he can see someone tilling a field and hear a skylark singing. The island is its own little world.
The point of all this, however, is not to be hesitant in using punctuation when smooth English usage requires it. This is quite the opposite of the practice in much of modern haiku, which, following the once avant-garde, now outdated poets of the early 20th century, began dispensing with normal punctuation, using little except perhaps an occasional, perfunctory hyphen. In English-language hokku, however, we make good and beneficial use of the punctuation available to us.
As I often say, punctuation is used to add fine shades of pause and emphasis, and it guides the reader through a verse smoothly and without confusion or awkwardness. That is precisely why we use it in everyday English, and precisely why we use it in hokku.
David
HOKKU 