Selected Haiku by Issa

By Robert Hass b. 1941 Robert Hass

Don’t worry, spiders,

I keep house

casually.

New Year’s Day—

everything is in blossom!

I feel about average.

The snow is melting

and the village is flooded

with children.

Goes out,

comes back—

the love life of a cat.

Mosquito at my ear—

does he think

I’m deaf?

Under the evening moon

the snail

is stripped to the waist.

Even with insects—

some can sing,

some can’t.

All the time I pray to Buddha

I keep on

killing mosquitoes.

Napped half the day;

no one

punished me!

6 haiku by Issa from The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa, edited and with an introduction by Robert Hass. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Source: The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho Buson and Issa (The Ecco Press, 1994)

Biography

Robert Hass is one of contemporary poetry’s most celebrated and widely-read voices. In addition to his success as a poet, Hass is also recognized as a leading critic and translator, notably of the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz and Japanese haiku masters Basho, Buson and Issa. Critics celebrate Hass’s own poetry for its clarity of expression, its conciseness, and its imagery, often drawn from everyday life. “Hass has noted his own . . .

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