From: "Alice K. Turner" 
Subject: Re: (urth) Sado Island
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 17:46:45 -0400




On Thursday, April 10, 2003, at 08:07  PM, Alice K. Turner wrote:
> Six years--gosh, are we all six years older? Surely not! Post the list,

oops. I posted from the wrong address.

http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0003/0197.shtml
Seas are cold tonight...
Stretching over Sado island
Silent clouds of stars.


http://www.worldhaikureview.org/pages/whcjapan15.shtml

haiku about Tanabata (Star Festival) appears in the chapter of
Echigo Road in  Basho's
Oku no Hosomichi: The Narrow Road to Oku
araumi ya Sado ni yokotau amanogawa (Basho)

Araumi  ya: wild sea
Sado ni yokotau: stretching to Sado Isle
Amanogawa: the Milky Way (literally)

Could be a pastiche of Basho?

I will ask some poetry friends.

Mimosa:
It is not a pastiche of Basho. It is the man himself (17th c.), and this is
a very famous poem. Here are a few more translations.


High over wild seas
surrounding Sado Island:
the river of heaven

      the rough sea -
      flowing toward Sado Isle
      the River of Heaven



      rough sea
      the Milky Way is crossing over
      to Sado



      And here is a tribute to it by a modern poet named Hoshino Tsubaki



      Sado Isle in view
      day stretches to an end
      on the vast sea

      (English version by ST & DWB)

      sado=Sado Island, north of Niigata; mie-te=has come in view;
oo-unabara=a big ocean; chijitsu=lengthening day, sunset getting later, a
spring kigo; kana=kireji, exclamation (Tsubaki is obviously conscious of
Basho's haiku: araumi ya Sado ni yokotau ama no kawa, or rough sea/ over
Sado Island/ milky way)

      As you gathered from the six-year-ago posts, the other fragments are
from Milton's "Il Pensoroso" and Tennyson's "Enoch Arden." I think the Basho
poem and the Tsubaki tribute are both intended to evoke feelings of humility
at our small place in the universe, which is certainly a theme in the Urth
series.

      -alga



      -alga












--