Friday, March 25, 2011

Poetry Friday: This Dewdrop World

This dewdrop world
It is but a dewdrop
And yet – and yet


 -- Issa 

More Poetry Friday at A Year of Reading.

10 comments:

Rodak said...

Like.

Pentimento said...

Yeah. It's sort of the meta-poem.

Mary Lee said...

So much said and not said with two words: "and yet."

Pentimento said...

Yes, it makes the poem really heartbreaking, I think. Issa was a Buddhist priest, so he was trained to see the world and its phenomena as impermanent, and not to become attached to them -- and yet . . . He wrote the poem after the death of one of his young children (if I'm not mistaken, all of his children died in childhood).

Anonymous said...

So graceful and so painful at the same time (more so knowing about the loss of his children). Beautiful.

Pentimento said...

There's a universe of grief in that repetition of "and yet," isn't there?

Karen Edmisten said...

Beautiful. Sad. Beautiful.

Enbrethiliel said...

+JMJ+

Had I read it at a more vulnerable time, it would have broken my heart.

Not knowing who Issa is, I also had an automatic guess about his background that was completely different to the reality.

And now I wish I had a similar gift for encapsulating volumes--or as you call them, universes--in a few little words, because otherwise I could never say why this poem is so beautiful.

Pentimento said...

Enbrethiliel, I think it must be the real goal of every true artist -- to say everything while appearing to say nothing. It's the highest art.

Andromeda Jazmon said...

Love it! Great photo paring too. I was reading Issa to my first graders this week, to teach them about haiku. He is wonderful!