Issa - The bitter part, eaten by the mother, mountain persimmon

澁いとこ母が喰ひけり山の柿 (shibui toko haha ga kui keri yama no kaki): the astringent part, the mother ate it: wild persimmons. 澁い is astringent, the tannin of a persimmon that dries the mouth, and a wild persimmon, 山の柿, is sweet at one end and astringent at the other; とこ is the part; 母が喰ひけり is the mother ate it, けり closing it as a thing seen and done. The verse is in the collected Issa of 1902, undated; from 1910 it was filed among the children of haiku and from 1921 among the mothers, and a Fukushima school's book for parents in 1935 reads it as this page does: the mother tastes first and gives the child the sweet end. Tsuda Sōkichi in 1921 read it from the poet's life. Issa lost his mother at three and was ill-used by a stepmother, and the mother in his verses is the one he watched other children have. The mother's part comes first, and the persimmons last. The English is Timothy L. Jackowski's, made for Takase Studios.

This poem always reminds me of a story in Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin where a mother gave the entire chocolate bar, a very rare treat indeed, to her child. A little chocolate got on the child's face and she wiped it off with her finger and ... took a small taste of the sweet for herself.