Heeding Haiku With Chèvrefeuille September 16th 2015 Death poem (or Jisei)

Credits: Old Graves

Dear friends of MLMM,

As you all maybe know I am hosting a daily haiku-meme at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. On that weblog I once did a month full of haiku by the “big five”, as I love to call them, Basho, Chiyo-Ni, Issa, Buson and Shiki, five well known classical haiku poets. In that month I shared the last haiku ever by Basho. This haiku is now known as his “death poem” or Jisei. Here is Basho’s death-poem:

ill on a journey
my dreams start to wander
across desiccated fields

© Matsuo Basho (Tr. Chèvrefeuille)

It’s very common in classical  times that poets wrote their death-poem, the last poem of their life. It’s however not my intention to write my death-poem already, but I like that custom a lot … maybe my death-poem will be once carved in my tombstone, but that’s not up to me.

How would my death-poem sound? What would it say? I don’t know … it’s not my time to pass away … That’s however the “task” of this week’s “Heeding Haiku With …” episode. Ask yourself, while looking back on your life, your career, your poetry and so on, … how would your “death poem”, your last haiku (only haiku), look …?

I had to try it myself too of course, here is my response, my inspired haiku is based on Basho’s death-poem, and looks like this:

my dreams wander
along the path of my life …
Honeysuckle blooms

Honeysuckle blooms
sharing her sweet perfume
I dream away

© Chèvrefeuille

Well … I hope you did like this post …. see you next time …

When you have written your poem(s), please TAG Heeding Haiku with Chèvrefeuille and Mindovemisery’s Menagerie. Then add your link to the Mister Linky widget below.

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About Chèvrefeuille

I am a Dutch haiku poet. And I am the owner and host of the weblog "Carpe Diem, a daily haiku meme" on Blogger (or Blogspot). I am writing haiku since the late eighties and in 2005 I became an international known haiku poet and in 2011 ten of my haiku were included in a worldwide anthology "Spasms of Light". With that anthology I became an even more known haiku poet. In October 2012 I started my daily haiku meme.

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