The Skin and Bones Poem.

[Guest guest]

Haiku is the fashion model of poetry, a heartbeat

away from being bare, being nothing. Hardly

any flesh there-- all grace, all poise.

 

Dissecting a haiku is like dissecting a flower,

not much to see under the dazzling splash of

color. Then there is the syllabic skeleton:

five, seven, five. But that is a mere technicality,

haiku is not that calcified syllabic spine, the

essence of haiku is its soul. What is this soul?

 

It begins with muga. Muga, in Japanese,

means self-effacing. In no other form of poetry

is the poet so absent, so unobtrusive. In this

sense haiku is the best example of nondual,

and Zen poetry.

 

Then, comes hosomi. Hosomi is bareness,

slenderness. The poem is hardly a poem in

substance, it's all spirit. It can be called a poem

only by an ineffable ' je ne se qua.''

 

" Summer lightning

Yesterday in the East

Today in the West. "

 

Kikaku

 

How can a poem be more unpoetic? It is sheer

shibumi (dryness) just a laconic weather report,

yet somehow, it drips 'sabi' ( loneliness.) The

awesome, beautiful, pitiless, loneliness of

nature. It has wabi (the beauty of poverty) and,

of course, yugen. Yugen is the mystery, the

depth, the darkness of things. It's difficult to

attain a sense of yugen, but when we do,

common things reveal an unfathomable

dark translucency, which beckons us home.

 

Pete