otoh

I’ve been reading some haiku recently. I like shorter forms of poetry and I like that haiku traditionally has themes related to nature. A really good poem, in my opinion, distills a moment or an idea into a small crystal. It is clear and compact. At a glance you might exclaim, “Yes! Oh my god, that’s it exactly!” And then you spend an eternity examining the facets and the infinite truth reflected there.

Poetry, and Asian poetry in particular, suffers in translation into another language. Still, there are gems to be found here. My favorite haiku in my recent reading is from Haiku: Seasons of Japanese Poetry edited by Johanna Brownell:

These butterflies of ours –
If they could speak, what pretty dreams
We’d hear about the flowers.

Call me a simpleton, but I get lost inside those words. How different would the world appear if we could see it through the eyes of a butterfly? This poem also reminds me of a well-known parable attributed to the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to to Taoism has this translation:

Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, fluttering buoyantly; a butterfly fully content being himself. He knew of no Zhuangzi! Suddenly, he awakened. And plain-old Zhuangzi doesn’t know if he’s Zhuangzi who just dreamt a butterfly or the butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi.

Taoist parables are full of paradoxes. How do we decide what is reality? And, for whatever reason, this reminds me of Edgar Allen Poe, the favorite of my maudlin teen years.

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
This much let me avow
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep - while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Is it important that he makes a statement at the end of the first section that is a question at the end of the second? (Bonus: What horror movie used those last two lines in the opening credits?) Hmmm, some days I think too much. And I seem to have wandered far from where I started. Do you Haiku?

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