Little sparrow,
out of the way, out of the way —
the horse is coming through.
— Issa · AI translation
The original
suzume no ko / soko noke soko noke / o-uma ga tōru
That is the source, in romaji. It is printed here rather than kept in a footnote because the English above is machine-made, not a scholar’s, and you should be able to check it against something rather than take it on trust.
The rendering follows the sense rather than forcing 5-7-5. Japanese counts on rather than syllables, and the two do not line up; padding a translation out to fit the English shape is how you end up with a poem the poet did not write.
Kobayashi Issa 1763–1828
Known for turning his attention to small and overlooked creatures — flies, frogs, sparrows — and addressing them directly. His life held an unusual amount of loss, and the warmth in the poems is generally read against it rather than apart from it.
10 more from Issa
- Do not kill it — / the fly is wringing its hands, / wringing its feet.
- The snow has melted / and the village is full / of children.
- Come and play with me, / sparrow / with no mother, no father.
- This world of dew / is only a world of dew — / and yet. And yet.
- So this, then, / is my last house? / Five feet of snow.
- Snail, / climb Mount Fuji — / slowly, slowly.
- Skinny frog, / do not give it up — / Issa is here.
- The ants' road / comes all the way down / from the peaks of cloud.
- My old village — / everything I go near, / everything I touch, a thorn.
- The harvest moon — / "get it down for me!" / the child is crying.
Why this is here at all
HaikuMail is a Chrome extension that hides your inbox behind a search-only reader, and holds the first thirty seconds with a poem. This is one of the 157 it draws from. That is the rest of the story.