Jisei: Japanese Death Poems and Haiku

Like a lotus leaf’s evaporating dew

I, too 

vanish.

— Senryu

Here are some English translations of jisei, or Japanese death poems. Not all the poems are haiku. Some are tanka or waka. Sme are Buddhist in nature, but some are poets seeking enlightenment. A few may have found it, while others seem more doubtful of the possibility.

Oh, fallen camellias,

if I were you,

I'd leap into the torrent!

― Takaha Shugyo

Although the consciousness of death is, in most cultures, very much a part of life, this is perhaps nowhere more true than in Japan, where the approach of death has given rise to a centuries-old tradition of writing jisei, or the "death poem." 

Such a poem is often written in the very last moments of the poet's life., though some of the poems are written in the contemplation of death. A good number of these poems are widely considered to be the final statements on life and death by poets facing their final days here on earth. 

The first soft snow:

leaves of the awed jonquil

bow low

― Matsuo Basho

Grasses wilt:

the braking locomotive

grinds to a halt.

― Yamaguchi Seishi

Farewell! I pass

as all things do:

dew drying on grass.

— Banzan

Many, but not all, of these poems are haiku. The influence of haiku on modern English poetry is clear. Certain precepts of Imagism relate more or less directly to haiku, such as the use of concrete imagery and "direct treatment of the thing (object/subject)." Ezra Pound translated Oriental poetry and wrote similar original poems himself, such as "In a Station of the Metro."

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:

Petals on a wet, black bough.

You can also see this influence in poems such as "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by Wallace Stevens. Other English-language poets who either wrote, translated, or were influenced by haiku include Richard Wright, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, Amy Lowell, Kenneth Rexroth, Margaret Atwood, and Robert Hass. Oriental influences have also been noted in the writings of early modernists like Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau.

The calm,

Cool face of the river

Asked me for a kiss.

— Langston Hughes, "Suicide’s Note"

The spring lingers on

In the scent of a damp log

Rotting in the sun.

— Richard Wright

Elderly sunflowers:

bees trimming their beards.

— Michael R. Burch

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