Haiku by Buson

To white plum blossoms.
Each night just dawning.
Evermore.

白梅に明る夜ばかりとなりにけり (shiraume ni akuru yo bakari to nari ni keri): white plum blossoms, and nights that now do nothing but dawn on them. 白梅 is the white plum, the first flower of the year and a word for early spring; 明る夜 is the night that dawns; ばかり is *only, nothing but*; となりにけり, *it has come to this*, is the old perfect with its weight of realization. It is the last verse Buson made. His disciple Kitō's account of the master's last night, the twenty-fourth of the twelfth month of Tenmei 3, has him calm and speaking as he always had, calling for a brush and dictating from his bed: two verses on a bush warbler, a pause, and then this one, with the instruction that it be headed *early spring*, a season he would not see. He died toward dawn on 25 January 1784, aged sixty-eight. Gekkei, who took the verse down, wrote that the master finished it and closed his eyes. Blyth read it as a verse with no further meaning: every day now, the dawn comes from the direction of the white plum. On two of the designs Master Takase brushes しら梅 in kana, as the 1784 print does. The English is Timothy L. Jackowski's, made for Takase Studios.

Buson died not seeing the dawn and not seeing again the plum blossoms that he envisioned in his poem. He died on the last month of winter and the plum blossoms outside, the harbinger of spring, perhaps spoke to him of what was to come. In this sense, T. Imoto focuses his commentary on the image of a single white plum blossom representing the absolute first light of dawn that grows and grows until the entire world is filled. And he uses this as a metaphor for the afterlife that Buson envisions before him.

Whether all Buson was saying was that it would be enough for him to see the plum blossoms just one more time in the morning or that he is speculating on the afterlife ... forever in our hearts will be Buson's image of night breaking into dawn, winter into spring ... and the promised hope of plum blossoms.

This is for Victoria.

Calligraphy Notes:

1) 明る (akuru) today is more commonly written 明くる (akuru).

2) For purely artistic reasons I have used kana for shira. So sometimes I use 白梅 (shiraume) and others しら梅 (shiraume).

Translation Notes:

白梅に
明る夜ばかりと
なりにけり

1) 白梅 (shiraume) - meaning "white plum blossoms". This combines the kanji 白 (read shira here) and 梅 (ume).

2) に (ni) - As Henderson puts it ni is "A postposition with many uses (at, in, to, by, for, etc.). These are usually indicated sufficiently in the literal translation." Most translators view this as translating to "with" in this case. Sharane suggests "amid" and we have used "to".

3) 明る (akuru) also written n 明くる (akuru) and means "next; following".

4) 夜 (yo) - means "night; evening"

5) ばかり (bakari) - meaning, in this case, "just" (as in "just dawning").

6) と (to) - meaning, in this case, "that".

7) なり (nari) - according to Jeffrey's Japanese <-> English dictionary, "(2) (after dictionary form verb) as soon as; right after; (3) (after past tense verb) while still; with previous state still in effect;"

8) に (ni) - see above.

9) けり (keri) - according to Jeffrey's Japanese <-> English dictionary, "(1) indicates recollection or realization (i.e. of hearsay or the past); (2) indicates continuation from the past to the present; (3) end; conclusion". Henderson offers, "A kireji marking either a pause or final stop. It was originally a verb suffix indicating a past tense, but has now no special meaning."