Haiku by Issa

Were my father here
At dawn we would gaze
Over the green fields

父ありてあけぼのみたし青田原 (chichi arite akebono mitashi aotabara): were my father here, I would want to see the dawn over the green fields. 父ありて is the counterfactual, if my father were alive; みたし is the classical ending for wanting a thing one cannot have; 青田原 is the plain of green paddies in early summer, when the transplanted rice has taken and a whole valley is one green. It is the last line of Issa's diary of his father's last illness, 父の終焉日記, written in 1801. The father died in the fifth month, with those fields outside the sickroom; the diary's last prose sentence is about the will the family refused to honor, and then the verse, and the diary ends. The turn from the will to the fields is the whole of it. The English is R. H. Blyth's, from his History of Haiku of 1963.

Calligraphy Notes:

1) From a visual perspective this poem is great as it is mostly kana with the last line all in kanji. This gives an interesting balance to the design.

2) Other sources write the haiku 父ありて明ぼの見たし青田原 with the reading chichi arite akebono mitashi aotahara. Using "aotahara" rather than "aotabara" or "aodabara".

Translation Notes:

1) 父 (chichi) meaning "father".

2) ありて (arite) meaning "exist; be present". This is from the verb ある (aru) meaning "to be; to exist; to live".

3) あけぼの (akebono) meaning "dawn." This is also commonly written with the kanji 曙.

4) みたし (mitashi) meaning "to watch; to see". From the verb 見る (miru) with the same meaning. The ending tashi indicates "wanting to watch; wanting to see".

5) 青田原 (aotabara though several sources use the reading aodabara). This is composed of 青田 (aota) meaning "green (rice) paddy" and 原 (hara) meaning "field".