Orange Hues

Loose Leaves – Art Inspired

 

 

Mark Rothko - Red, Orange, Orange on Red (1962)

Rothko skies

and Seagram views

– holiday as art.

 

 

 

A Lost Dragon

Loose Leaves – Looking Back / Art Inspired

 

Tani Buncho - Dragon in Clouds (British Museum)

Beside the Benten-dō on the island in the middle of Shinobazu Pond there used to be a painting of a dragon by Tani Bunchō (1763–1841). It wasn’t easy to find or particularly easy to see, and I suspect many people missed it, because it was situated on the ceiling over the fountain (手水舎) where visitors to the Benten-dō purify themselves, washing their hands and mouths, before making their donations, saying their prayers, and lighting incense. I think the painting may have been removed during the renovation work after the Benten-dō was damaged during the earthquake on 3 March 2011. It was a small wooden panel. I very much hope it has since been preserved somewhere safe. 

The painting illustrating this poem, also by Tani Bunchō, is similar. It is a hanging scroll that is part of the Japanese collection at the British Museum.

 

 

Arcing over water –

a dragon

by the Benten-dō.

 

 

 

Yoshida Hiroshi - Carp Tortoises (1940)

À La Recherche ...

Loose Leaves – Art Inspired

 

Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (1876)

This art inspired poem originally appeared on Bluesky in response to a #Paintku writing prompt: ‘Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette,’ a painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1876. Many thanks to Martina Matijević for this particular ‘madeleine’ which reminded me of Marcel Proust’s “À la recherche du temps perdu” – a magnificent novel that stands like a literary cathedral, and which took me twenty years to read (see here).

 

 

LES SOUVENIRS DE MARCEL

 

Every moment relived –

catching a cough

in a handkerchief.

 

 

 

See also, Leaf 151

Warm Ochre Tones

Loose Leaves – Looking Back

 

This is a somewhat hybrid, art inspired poem, written in response to a visual #dailyimageprompt – a painting, originally posted on Bluesky, by the artist: Mike, @po3try.bsky.social. Seeing its warm ochre tones evoked a kind of alliterative synaesthesia, reminding me of a certain singer whom I have always been quite fond of …

 

 

Mellowed by time –

her rust red hair

and velvet voice.

 

 

 

Belinda Carlisle

Image Credits: Mike (top) & Nik Spanos (bottom)

Ave Maris Stella

Loose Leaves – Art Inspired

 

Lita Albuquerque - Southern Cross from Stellar Axis Antarctica, Ross Ice Shelf (2006)

This poem has a double inspiration: Firstly, Lita Albuquerque’s “Southern Cross from Stellar Axis Antarctica, Ross Ice Shelf” (2006). And secondly, “Ave Maris Stella”, composed by Mine Kawakami, and performed at Santiago de Compostela, Spain (2025).

 

 

AVE MARIS STELLA

 

All points fixed

still yet moving

amid the infinite.

 

 

 

Mine Kawakami - Ave Maris Stella (2025)

 

This poem was originally written and posted on Bluesky

Akutagawa & Autumn at Sankeien

Loose Leaves – Essays on Haiku

 

Akutagawa Ryūnosoke (1892-1927)

Last December, during a visit to Sankeien, near Yokohama, I came across a haiku written by a famous Japanese writer, Akutagawa Ryūnosoke (1892-1927). The haiku was about a visit he made to these lovely gardens in the autumn of 1915. Akutagawa included the poem in a letter he wrote to the son of the garden’s founder shortly after his visit:

 

ひとはかり浮く香煎（こうせん）や白湯（さゆ）の秋

ひとはかり | うくこうせんや | さゆのあき

Hito wa kari | uku kousen ya | sayu no aki

-        Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, 1915. 三溪園 (さんけいえん)

 

I found the haiku reproduced on an information board about the Hatsunejaya (初音茶屋), a small hexagonal wooden teahouse in Sankeien, where a black iron pot used to hang from the ceiling, heated by a fire. Here, Akutagawa notes in his letter, tea was served during his visit by a woman, as shown in the accompanying postcard:

 

Hatsunejaya (初音茶屋)

The information board provides a translation of his haiku in English:

 

A spoonful of tea / herbal tea and hot water / float through autumn air

 

However, this is an inelegant, and somewhat tautological, translation of what I think is a very deftly and densely-layered haiku. I asked my wife, who is Japanese, what she thought of this translation. She agreed, there’s a lot more going on in the original Japanese. But, how to capture all of the elements of Akutagawa’s haiku in English?

 

Hatsunejaya (初音茶屋) Information Panel

Modern English haiku, as it is represented in most of the leading contemporary English language haiku magazines and journals, tends to eschew the 5-7-5 syllable structure as “too wordy” and cumbersome when compared to Japanese haiku. But here, as I soon discovered, we have a haiku in Japanese which is so tightly and compactly layered it is supremely difficult to render it into English and do the original poem justice. Consequently, it posed a challenge to me which I simply could not let go. Over the course of the next week or so, I kept coming back to the haiku and tinkering with it – trying to see if I could come up with a better English version.

 

Yoshida Hiroshi - Sankeien (1935)

Checking the website of Sankeien, I found there the original poem was given again. When I clicked on the automatic translation function of my web browser my computer rendered the haiku into the following English version, which was a slight improvement on the one printed on the information board:

 

Autumn of floating incense and white-hot water

 

This prompted me to try using Google Translate, which perhaps fared slightly better still, giving me:

 

A delicate incense floats, and plain hot water — autumn

 

These two computer translations succeed in giving the haiku a more poetic tone, perhaps – but they are still too literal. In essence, neither of them is poetry. So clearly, we need to start afresh. And the best way to do this is to begin with a genuine literal translation:

 

one small-scoop/measure | floating kousen | hot (white) water of autumn

 

Two points to note here are as follows: 1. 香煎茶 kousencha is tea made from powdered green tea or roasted barley flour, with spices and herbs (such as kelp, red shiso, and dried plum), and 2. ひとすくい [一掬い] hitosukui is a small ornamental spoon​ (usually written using kana alone). These two elements each convey a wealth of input to the original haiku. One implies a small measure [a spoonful] of something [tea] which expands out into something far larger and more diffuse, hence the poem speaks of ‘floating’ – which is perhaps why the automatic translations appear to default to the term ‘incense’ even though the word incense is not actually used in the poem. My wife thought this aspect of the poem referred more to the very small grains of powdered tea which were ‘suspended’ in the ‘sayu’ or ‘white-hot’ water, perhaps suggesting both fresh, pure water and white steam at the same time. Consequently, reading this haiku in Japanese, we get a double suggestion of the fragrance of the tea as well as the visual of watching the tea slowly dissolving into both the hot water and the air, most likely in the form of the rising steam and smoke from the fire boiling the water in its iron pot. As such, the tea and the open-sided wooden teahouse become the essence of autumn itself as it is experienced by the senses of sight and smell. In this manner, the haiku makes us feel autumn.

 

But that makes for a lot of separate elements to cram into an English translation of this haiku! – Breaking the haiku down, we need to include the following: 1. The smallness of a measured spoonful; 2. The spiced tea powder (kousencha); 3. The expansive notion of floating or suspension; 4. The white-hotness of water; 5. The association of the water (and all these separate elements) with autumn (kigo). Given the quantity and complexity of these components, I found it very hard to distil everything down into a suitably brief and spare, free-form haiku. But, wanting to avoid excessive “wordiness”, I decided it was best to add the limitation of crafting the translation into a 5-7-5 structure. In doing so, I thought that this would give the poem some sort of order as well as limiting its length within the somewhat traditional confines of a 5-7-5 haiku. Within those confines, of course, as always with haiku there are further divisions which need to be employed for greater expressive effect, such as splitting the haiku either into units of two (using a kiregi), or three (the standard three lines of 5-7-5), or, ideally a combination of both. Working five elements into such expressive divisions is the real challenge in translating this particular haiku. In the end, I went through more than 33 iterations before I settled on a version which I thought worked reasonably well. This took me from my first spare and impressionistic (free-form) rendering of:

 

Scent and sediment / suspended – / autumn’s hot water.

 

To my final, 5-7-5 rendering of:

 

Infused with white steam – / a pinch of spiced tea gently / drifts into Autumn.

 

I’ve anguished a lot over whether nor not ‘drifts’ should be ‘floats’ – and it could easily be either; but, in the end, I felt that ‘drifts’ better serves as a bridge between the parallel inference of both the water-soluble and the airborne aspects of the poem’s central allusion. To my mind, ‘floats’ works well for the air, but otherwise it rather implies something simply borne on the surface of the water, rather than something equally suffused or suspended within the water and the air. Hence, recalling that old nostrum of earth and heaven: “As above, so below,” –  to my mind, in both eye and ear – ‘drifts’ successfully carries both connotations; as well as perhaps also a third, which is that sensual experience of the two combined in a feeling, as I described it earlier on, when I first broke down the essential elements of the original poem, i.e. – its autumnal essence.

 

Hatsunejaya (初音茶屋)

In his letter to his friend, Akutagawa described this haiku as being ‘commonplace,’ meaning he thought it too conventional or unoriginal.  Nevertheless, 110 years after it was first written, I think his poem is actually a very subtle and deft work of art. It is an exemplary haiku. It manages to do what the most challenging haiku strive to achieve, which is to embody and express a multitude (of images, ideas, and/or sensations through associations, suggestions, and allusion) in the simplest and sparest of forms.

 

Yoshida Hiroshi - Teahouse (1938)

In concluding his pioneering four-volume survey of Japanese haiku, the scholar, R.H. Blyth, observed: “The three-line translation [of haiku] obscures something fundamental in the originals, something that belongs to the Japanese mind, the Japanese language and the literature it produced and which produced it. We see it in linked poems, in the puns of the language of Nō[h], in the empty spaces of pictures, the absence of things in rooms, the silences of conversation. This ‘something’ is a certain continuity, a lack of division, a feeling of the whole when dealing with the parts.”* – I think this reflection sums up very well the challenge of translating Akutagawa’s haiku about a simple little wooden tea house at Sankeien into English in a way which attempts to do justice to the dense complexity, and yet also the light and buoyant subtlety, of his original poem.

 

ひとはかり浮く香煎（こうせん）や白湯（さゆ）の秋

Infused with white steam –

a pinch of spiced tea gently

drifts into Autumn.

 

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, 1915. 三溪園 (さんけいえん)

translated by Tim Chamberlain, 2025. 三溪園 (さんけいえん)

 

 

*R.H. Blyth, Haiku: Volume 4, Autumn-Winter (Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1982 [1952]), pp. 1008-1009.

Green Leaves

Loose Leaves – Art Inspired

 

Grace Gillespie - Under the Blossom (Indigo)

This poem was in part inspired by a wonderful photograph which I saw posted on Bluesky, but also by the sparrows which live in a tall hedge running along the lane behind where we live in Tokyo – and which I’ve written about several times before here on Shinobazu Pond 俳句 (see, Leaf 8, Leaf 229, and Leaf 372). There’s something about hearing and seeing a flock of sparrows which always brightens my mood. It often reminds me of the happy and carefree feeling I felt when running around with my friends in the summer’s back in England when I was kid.

 

青葉光るぺちゃくちゃ話す雀かな

あおばひかる | ぺちゃくちゃはなす | すずめかな

Aoba hikaru | pechakucha hanasu | suzume kana

 

Shining green leaves | chattering talk | sparrows (!)

 

 

Sunshine and

green leaves –

sparrows chatter. 

A different version of this poem was originally written and posted on Bluesky.

Free

Loose Leaves – Looking Back

 

 

When I was a teenager at Sixth Form College in the UK, the periods on our timetable when we had no lessons were called ‘Frees’, and they were always spent in the canteen – catching up with friends.

 

 

Our college days –

recalling the times

when we were free.

 

 

 

Photo Credit: SooLinen

Siesta

Loose Leaves – Looking Back

 

‘The Sheltering Sky’ (1949) by Paul Bowles is first-rate novel. Exotic and melancholy in equal measures. I read it when I was 18 years old, only a few years after I’d been to Egypt and had a taste of the North African climate, which the novel distils in its own inimitable way. I’ve read it several times since. I think I’ve felt differently about it each time I’ve read it. I probably saw Bernardo Bertolucci’s film version first. Bowles later said of the movie (in which he has a cameo – watching his characters arrive): “The less said about the film now, the better.” As with any novel adapted for the screen, it’s perhaps best to see the two as separate artworks, each true to two different artists’ intentions. However, the movie’s soundtrack by Ryuichi Sakamoto is sublime. It’s been a long time since I last saw the film, but I often listen to the soundtrack on CD.

 

The following haiku was written during my most recent re-reading of the novel. As an ‘art inspired’ haiku, this poem is almost a piece of ‘found art.’ Although I’d very much like to think of it as co-written with Bowles, that’s certainly too much of a stretch. To be honest, I’m not really sure what I feel about this poem. I don’t really feel like I wrote it, but it very definitely isn’t a direct quote from the novel itself.* It’s an adaptation of sorts; something perhaps somewhere between paraphrase and pastiche. But as a haiku, it still feels like its own thing. Meant as a minimalist homage. I hope Bowles might have approved.

 

 

THE SHELTERING SKY

 

Siesta –

for all but

the sun.

 

 

 

*See: Paul Bowles, 'The Sheltering Sky' (Flamingo Modern Classic, 1993), p. 84.

Top Photo Credit: The Sheltering Sky (1990) IMDb | Bottom Photo Credit: Tim Chamberlain (John Malkovich postcard by Brigitte Lacombe, 1989)

Sun (1973)

Loose Leaves – Remembrance

 

David Hockney - Sun (1973)

A poem in memory of artist, David Hockney (9 July 1937 – 11 June 2026), who said that: “What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing.”

 

 

An open window

painting pots

of sun.

 

 

 

Desolation Angel

Loose Leaves – Reflections

 

Carolyn Cassady - Jack Kerouac Reading

Some writers rise far above the rest when we are growing up. We read them with an insatiable fervour, feeling every word as if it speaks directly to our soul. But how many of them continue to echo through all the subsequent chapters of our lives, even if only ever so faintly? – This is a poem about Jack Kerouac:

 

 

A less simple

simple life –

Desolation Peak.

 

 

Desolation Peak Look-Out

 

This poem was originally written and posted on Bluesky in response to a #dailyhaikuprompt: 'desolation.'

Photograph Credits: Carolyn Cassady & Pete Hoffman

Mr Mojo Risin'

Loose Leaves – Art Inspired

 

James Douglas Morrison

(8 December 1943 – 3 July 1971)

 

 

Filled with speculation –

blank pages of a notebook

left in Paris.

 

 

 

Bluesky Quarterly Review (2026) #2

April-June 2026

 

A compendium of poems posted on Bluesky in the second quarter of 2026:

 

Eiji Ino - Album Vol. 16. Cape Inubo - 1

 

Only a faint echo

of itself –

this rural Eki stamp.

 

***

 

Pond

        ripple –

ribbit.

 

***

 

Waves roll

and repeat

roll and repeat.

 

***

 

Putting on a tea cozy

spouting

stuff and nonsense.

 

***

 

Morning meadow

dissolving slowly –

Spring mist.

 

***

 

All that’s left –

in the bottom of my glass

half a yellow sun.

 

***

 

Finding

a sweet spot –

alone in retreat.

 

***

 

Evening calm –

broken by a

blackbird.

 

***

 

Abiding alone –

rock pool crab

awaits the tide.

 

***

 

Windscreen wipers

battling the blur

of rain on the road.

 

***

 

the earth –

unsteady

under my feet.

 

***

 

New leaves –

so small

so soft.

 

***

 

Fixed in time –

all a butterfly’s dreams

pinned.

 

***

 

(a lag) reflecting

then/now –

starlight.

 

***

 

Once window-shaped

a bright light –

winks out.

 

***

 

Gaudy day denied

a mellow light –

her eyes, walk on.

 

after Byron.

 

***

 

Covered

in cat hair –

discarded winter coat.

 

click here for commentary

 

***

 

Bouncing back

beneath bare feet –

fallen leaves.

 

***

 

Matching her hair

her mood –

raven black.

 

***

 

The night he died

his voice –

checking all’s alright.

 

In memory of Ralph Jackson.

 

***

 

Magnified –

the scent of leaf mulch

around its roots.

 

***

 

Moon rise –

raindrops dot

the windowpane.

 

***

 

MONET EXHIBITION

 

Sound of people

taking pictures

of pictures.

 

***

 

Needle spinning

twixt north & south –

umbrella struggles.

 

***

 

All the wrong way

about it

we went.

 

***

 

All week

just out of reach –

my foggy memory.

 

***

 

Names but not faces –

using half the head space

I used to rely on.

 

***

 

Day dreams –

the complete man

I meant to be.

 

***

 

Ad Infinitum …

always urging you to click

before you’ve seen.

 

***

 

The Speleologist –

wriggling through

a gap in time.

 

***

 

Whittling away –

same old stick

in the mud.

 

click here for commentary

 

***

 

A butterfly

on a bear skin –

changing the guard.

 

***

 

Rose tinted

on the porch –

a pint of milk.

 

***

 

Selling a world

that once was –

rusted shop sign.

 

***

 

Ruffled plumage

shivering with the wind –

broken umbrella.

 

***

 

Watching –

the echo of clouds

drifting.

 

***

 

Tinfoil-lined nest –

magpies chattering

conspiracy theories.

 

***

 

Taking fright

a partridge poops

taking flight.

 

***

 

Red petals

soft furled

within …

 

***

 

A full 180 –

future hopes

fade into the past.

 

***

 

A rumble of thunder –

heading home

for tea.

 

***

 

Stewed fruit –

disliking a dose of

my own medicine.

 

***

 

Another day

holding it together –

my frayed shoelace.

 

***

 

Busier than usual –

the bus

into town.

 

***

 

Keeping the

conversation flowing –

a fresh pot of tea.

 

***

 

She keeps

a constant tally –

withered grass.

 

***

 

Spending the best

part of the day

in pyjamas.

 

***

 

As long as it lasts –

double rainbows

singing a duet.

 

***

 

Not my name but

addressed to me:

Dear John …

 

***

 

First open window of

summer, welcoming in

sparrow song,

 

***

 

Another leap of faith

falling short again –

squirrel vs. bird feeder.

 

***

 

John Duffin - Recent Past [Waterstones Piccadilly] (2004)

 

All the new books

I bought back then

– yellowing.

 

click here for commentary

 

***

 

A taste of times

unchanged –

tinned rice pudding.

 

***

 

I am an eye –

amid a swirl

of snowflakes.

 

***

 

Clock chimes –

melodious but

meaningless today.

 

***

 

Twittering swaying

unseen –

green reeds.

 

***

 

Grubby mittens –

scooping up all

the pick n mix.

 

***

 

Adjusting for inflation

empty rhetoric …

again.

 

***

 

Morning light –

humming a half-

remembered melody.

 

***

 

Teaching patience –

a glass of Turkish tea

too hot to drink.

 

***

 

Cotton wool

between her toes –

Ferrari red again.

 

***

 

All that’s left –

a snapshot

in my mind.

 

***

 

Withering

where we left it –

cut flowers.

 

***

 

Orbiting the peony –

bumblebee attempts

a moon landing.

 

***

 

Swinging in time

with the bus –

omomori on her bag.

 

***

 

Hanging

by the door –

a cicada’s cloak.

 

***

 

Her eyes

over her mask –

smiling.

 

***

 

Watching a curl

of incense

easily ascend.

 

***

 

Carried by the wind –

pine needles

sea scented.

 

***

 

“Truth

         beauty –

                  that is all.”

 

after John Keats

 

***

 

Green tea

and honey –

before she sings.

 

***

 

Watching the world –

another opportunity

another arms deal.

 

***

 

Circling back –

hawks gloating

over the battlefield.

 

***

 

Sleet persists to swirl –

interfering with

my eyes.

 

***

 

Sun sweltering heat

shimmering

off hot stone.

 

***

 

Buzzing about

the snapdragons

and hollyhocks.

 

***

 

World under

the waterfall –

Tokyo typhoon.

 

***

 

Short day –

demanding a refund

from the clouds.

 

***

 

Remembering how

grandfather peeled

a tangerine.

 

***

 

Pomade –

or oil paint

and turpentine?

 

***

 

Bikini –

barely covering

such self-belief.

 

***

 

Wife away –

I sleep

diagonally.

 

***

 

A dollar bill

folded into

four quarters.

 

Four quarters

folded into

a dollar bill.

 

***

 

Kilometres

counting a steady beat –

autobahn.

 

***

 

After the doorbell

echoes dog

barks.

 

***

 

Making the most

of a shared joke –

marriage ties.

 

***

 

I have

no interest –

in deference.

 

***

 

A new tune drops –

skylark falls

from the top spot.

 

***

 

Aroma of cut grass

enjoying

my mochi.

 

***

 

All that remains –

a lens of blackened

earth.

 

***

 

Second day of tsuyu –

the birds have a lot

to talk about.

 

***

 

Singing a seasonal song –

parsley, sage, rosemary

and thyme.

 

***

 

An honourable discharge –

waiting for

the ricochet.

 

***

 

Moonless night

deepening the dark

far from home.

 

***

 

In the boardroom –

daydreaming he’s

Bruce Wayne.

 

***

 

Making the most

of two cups

of tea.

 

***

 

Snow mountains –

melting into

the view.

 

***

 

Two men

dining together

pomme frites.

 

***

 

Maple Drive –

lined with

plane trees.

 

***

 

Sly fox

slinking

out the back.

 

***

 

Orange-

  blossom

      petals

           fall.

 

***

 

Eating sunflower seeds –

her smile gifting

the light within.

 

Neon Mary - Lemon Tree by the Swimming Pool