Watering Flowers

The Year Begins

June 28
Thursday

This morning I am watering flowers. It is said it will reach 100 degrees today. The Impatiens suffer in this heat. They need a great deal of water to do well and it has been long since it rained.

My house is for sale in preparation for an extended stay in Mexico. A friend of mine was gracious enough to plant these flowers in the hope that the house would be more appealing to buyers. The lawn and plants at her home are as beautiful as any I have seen; including in many parks. She works hard and the plants appreciate her efforts.

She told me she knew little about annuals but she has done well here. My task is not to let them die.

Impatiens are among my favorite flowers. They are vividly colored, in constant bloom and thrive in shade. My mother loved flowers. As I traveled I would photograph the flowers I found for her. She took great pleasure in such things. The flowers here could use her touch.

Poor little flower--
can't love you as mother did;
nor can you love me.

Duke, my dog, follows the hose from bed-to-bed stealing what water he can. He never tires of it.

More desireable

than his bowl;

water from my hose.

Today I should finish Bethel's new biography of Hoffer. A good read about an interesting and complicated man. I read Hoffer's The True Believer many years ago; unique and thought provoking. I should read it once more.

I enjoy books more than I can express. A life without books would be difficult. I fear losing my sight. What would I do if I could not read?

I have seen a T-shirt: "So many books--so little time." I am aware of that. I am already sixty-four! There is so much left to read and learn. The older I get the more I treasure time. Some lives fade away; others drop from a cliff. Which will be my end?

However it comes I pray I will meet it with the same grace and dignity as did Issa Kobayashi:

There are thanks to be given:

this snow on the bedquilt

it too is from heaven.

               (translation by Harold Henderson)

My first exposure to haiku was Henderson's An Introduction to Haiku: An anthology of Poems and Poets from Basho to Shiki. I purchased the paperback in a Goodwill store for fifty cents sometime around 1967-69. It has been one of my best investments in time and money.

In the mid-eighties I read a mild criticism of Henderson's translations as somewhat artificial. Perhaps they are. I am no scholar and know nothing of the Japanese language. Still, I prefer his translation of this haiku of Issa's to others I have read:

Oh, don't mistreat

the fly! He wrings his hands!

He wrings his feet!

                 (Henderson)

Oh, don't swat!

the fly rubs hands

rubs feet

                 (William J. Higginson)

Or,

Don't kill that fly!

Look--it's wringing its hands,

wringing it's feet.

                   (Robert Haas)

Literal translations often fail. A poem is more than simple description. A good poem is emotion laid bare or a description that evokes emotion.

In the end my preferences matter to no one but me. I do not curse the translators; the poem speaks to them one way; to me another. It is the way of all poetry.

So I also found pleasure in Higginson's The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku (1985) and Haas' The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson & Issa. (1994)

Haiku Henderson

haiku Higginson and Haas--

Kobayashi's friends.

Enough! I have watered the flowers!