I am now staring glumly at a pile of 70-odd books I am very fond of. I can’t take more than half of them with me. One I’m regretfully leaving behind is Light Verse from the Floating World, a collection of premodern Japanese senryu, compiled and translated by Makoto Ueda.

A few favourites:

with a black dog
for a lantern, he walks
along the snowy path

maple viewing:
his mother tells him not to do
what he did last year

“My old man
still wants to go north
instead of west”
(The Yoshiwara was in the northern part of Edo. The Buddhist paradise was believed to lie in the west.)

when they’ve finished
praising the winter moon
the slam the door on it

starting to kill himself
the actor stops to watch a fight
in the audience

her only pleasures:
tormenting the daughter-in-law
and visiting the temple

“Don’t go out
with that fellow,” both fathers
tell their sons

the love letter
from a man she doesn’t care for -
she shows it to mother

“There is no hell” -
to his mistress, the priest
tells the truth

locked up at home
his dreams roam
the pleasure quarters
(a parody of Basho’s deathbed poem: ailing on a journey/ my dreams roam / a withered moor)

his head drooped so low
the reprimand passes
far above it