A summer hokku by Shōritsu, in daoku form:
At the sound of thunder,
Its petals fall —
The poppy.
Well, that’s a rather dramatic hokku. The thunder must have been boomingly loud.
The verse is reminiscent of Buson’s summer hokku as loosely translated by R. H. Blyth:
The heavy wagon
Rumbles by;
The peony quivers.
But Shōritsu’s verse makes the effect even stronger.
One could change Buson’s verse like this:
At the passing
Of the heavy wagon,
The peony petals fall.
But getting back to Shōritsu’s verse, what we have is a harmony of opposites: the loud, strong boom of the thunder against the delicate frailty of the poppy petals.
David
