The Year of the Ox just started. Some of the oxen on decorations look like the Merrill Lynch bull, perhaps created in the hope the year will bring back the bull market.
I was skimming through Washburn and Major’s excellent World Poetry and bumped into an old friend. Czeslaw Milosz’ poem on poetry, “Reading the Japanese Poet Issa: (1762-1826)” is for me also a poem on painting landscapes and flowers. It includes three of Issa’s haiku.
A good world –
dew drops fall
by ones, by twos
A cuckoo calls
for me, for the mountain,
for me, for the mountain
and
In this world
we walk on the roof of Hell
gazing at flowers
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