The old book A Year of Japanese Epigrams attributes this autumn hokku to Bashō — though I have not been able to find it in collections of his verses. In modern hokku terms it would be a daoku, that is, an objective hokku, but whether it was so originally, I cannot say. Remember that sometimes old hokku were written with a double meaning. I prefer to take it as objective, which makes it in my view a far better verse than a subjective interpretation would offer:
Morning wind;
Only one wild goose
In the white clouds.
Or we could revise it somewhat to improve the flow:
Morning wind;
Among the white clouds —
A lone wild goose.
Asa kaze ya tada shira kumo ni kari hitotsu
Morning wind ya only white clouds at wild-goose one
It gives us a feeling of solitude that one senses in many autumn hokku, when, as Nature begins to turn inward, so do humans.
It often seems to me as I translate, that when writing hokku, English generally gives us far more options for word choices and shades of meaning than the traditional Japanese “hokku” vocabulary. Is that just a limited perception or reality? It would be interesting to hear a learned Japanese view on this.
David
I have no knowledge of Japanese but it has long been my feeling that English is a language rich in its vocabulary as a result of history. Its roots lie in both the Germanic tongues and the Romance languages, with various acquisitions from even further afield (bungalow, anyone?). Conquest and invasion, both by and of, play their part.
It therefore wouldn’t surprise me if other languages, less mongrel in their development, didn’t bestow quite the same ability to choose among alternative words but I am happy to learn.
In our poems we enjoy the surprising new word, in Japanese poems, perhaps the enjoyment is of a change of tension within an known structure.
The melancholic feeling that it evokes seems to enhance my enjoyment of the verse.