Waiting for the Moving

of the Water,

Step Through, Step In

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

The cicada’s shell;

The creature sang away his

Self, his utterness.

~ Bashô [Englished by Phillip Whidden]

When life lies dead, his poetry, his shell

Will be translucent, one cicada’s skin

Cast off.  This husk will not provide his smell

That once existed in his armpits.  Sin

Will have its fragrance elsewhere, in the mind

Of readers, maybe, as they sniff his lines

And images.  There these are only rind

With flesh and juice scooped out.  The hollow shrines

Of stanzas will not have his semen, blood

And sweat as relics of his holiness.

The maleness of him will avoid the cud

Of critics chewing in their lowliness.

  His singing will have swollen him beyond

    His case that’s caught inside a troubled pond.

© Phillip Whidden