Translating Basho…April 21, 2018

The Friday Reading Group gathered to translate a Basho haiku from the Japanese. “Old pond…new frog…water jump-in sound”  is how one translator renders it, but every rendering renews both poem and poet because the poem is the poem of poems. The readers rendered the haiku this way:

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There is an old pond/A frog jumps in/spash (Ben Blum)

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ice pond just melts ssssshhh/frog jumps ripple (circle) green/green (circle) green green (Lin Haire-Sargeant)

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Ancient pond, ancient/ silence–until a frog leaps/ down and up leaps splash! (Debra San)

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An old pond lies still./A springing frog awakens/Shattering water. (Josh Cohen)

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A quiet old pond/Frog jumps into the water/The quiet pond sings (Hu Hohn)

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A pond full of frogs;/A jumping and one goes in;/Kersplashing echoes. (Albert Lafarge)

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