R. H. Blyth makes a significant point regarding the order of elements in hokku. To do so, he uses a verse by Ryōta, which I shall give here in my translation:
Who is awake,
The lamp still lit?
Cold midnight rain.
And then Blyth gives us a different arrangement for comparison, here again in my translation:
Cold midnight rain;
Who is awake,
The lamp still lit?
In the first, we are first presented with an unanswered question followed by the wider setting — “cold midnight rain.”
In the second, we begin with the cold midnight rain, but are left with the question and the image of the burning light in the mind.
We learn from this that how we order a hokku determines how we perceive it, and how we perceive it determines its effect.
The preferable version, of course, is the first, because it leaves us with the sound of the midnight rain, which only deepens the preceding question and its feeling of loneliness — Who is it awake, / The lamp still lit?
And the answer is precisely this:
Cold rain at midnight.
Of course it is an answer that is a no-answer, because to answer a question asked in hokku is to spoil that empty feeling of not-knowing, an emptiness in which the cold rain of midnight ceaselessly falls.
David
HOKKU 