Issa - In this world of ours, We walk above hell, Gazing at flowers

世の中は地獄の上の花見哉 (yo no naka wa jigoku no ue no hanami kana): this world is flower-viewing on the roof of hell. 世の中は sets up the human world as the subject of a definition; 地獄の上の is on top of hell, its roof or its lid; 花見 is the spring outing under the cherry trees, with food and drink; 哉 closes the definition as an exclamation. The Japanese has no we and no walk: it is a copula, and the poem is a sentence that defines us. Issa wrote it in 株番, the verse book of his travels of 1812 and 1813 between Shimōsa, Edo and Shinano. Japanese readers from 1908 to 1936 heard the Pure Land preacher in it, the world impermanent and damned and partying anyway; the critic Takayasu Gekkō in 1916 heard what keeps it from being only a sermon: in his tears there is laughter, in his laughter tears. The English is R. H. Blyth's rendering, lightly altered.