Still Autumn – Haiku

問君能有幾多愁
恰似一江春水向東流
虞美人
李煜
Asking how much sorrow one can bear
Is like spring water flowing eastwards.
Fair Lady Yu
Li Yu

old Christmas cards
the dead won’t write anymore
the young post pictures

let’s visit
the dark side of the moon
to see the light

snow flakes
on the monastery bell
perfect zazen

biting frost
a wanderer is leaving
first steps in first snow

half the story
is rain, hail and thunder
and another half

sunday afternoon
tea with the parents
doggy’s grey, too

first snow
on the highway
jingle bells' speed

falling forever
from the flashlight of life
into the abyss

frosty sky
wild geese migrate southwards
but the homeless stay

winter arrives
some must die now
not the snowman

Li Yu (李煜) is also known as Li Houzhu (李後主), Houzhu means last ruler. He lived from 937 until he has been poisoned in 978. None of his poems can be found in the compilation 300 Poems of the Tang-Dynasty. As ruler of the Southern Tang Dynasty he had been incompetent, but he has been a well known poet of Ci (詞) lyric, a form that used tunes and very complicated forms, in which you had meticuously look for the ping (平) and ze (仄) tones. Most of the tunes have been lost, but Deng Lijun (鄧麗君) had published a song using this poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e0FMAb7q3g; it appeared on the album 淡淡幽情 in 1983.

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