Hey, Peter Y., your close reading is enticing!
Umberto's haiku seems to present a narrative. As with a film that I turn on midway, there is plenty of the story [behind the haiku] that I do not know, but I do catch the mood--and to me it is decidedly Buddhist. The impermanence of all life--from tiny insects to humanity and beyond--is immanent. All forms of life are vulnerable to illness, suffering and death. Perhaps there is a macro/mircro lens on this scene: human suffering catching the ear, even as the papery corpses accumulate by the lamp. Life forms of all kinds are living and dying, largely without fanfare. Amazingly [Lorin, yes], this scene suddenly expands--wow!
In Fay's haiku, the ants emerging from a hole seem industrious--as if they are setting out to forage for food or territory. Wondering when she stopped playing the toy piano [amazing the toy piano's resurgence in contemporary music!], Fay may be asking herself when she put aside whimsical piano playing--the fanciful "as if-ness" of child's play--for the acquiring of skills that will prepare her for equivalent foraging. This self reflection may be a musing about the place of creativity in a person's life. Is more foraging [work] perhaps needed, or the exact opposite; to balance the predominance of work, must attention be given to the free toy[ing] that is so essential to the creative process? Possibly one of the of the many subtexts of this beguiling haiku.
I, too,would like to vote for both! But if I choose only 1, it will be the reflective musing of Fay's haiku.
Umberto's haiku seems to present a narrative. As with a film that I turn on midway, there is plenty of the story [behind the haiku] that I do not know, but I do catch the mood--and to me it is decidedly Buddhist. The impermanence of all life--from tiny insects to humanity and beyond--is immanent. All forms of life are vulnerable to illness, suffering and death. Perhaps there is a macro/mircro lens on this scene: human suffering catching the ear, even as the papery corpses accumulate by the lamp. Life forms of all kinds are living and dying, largely without fanfare. Amazingly [Lorin, yes], this scene suddenly expands--wow!
In Fay's haiku, the ants emerging from a hole seem industrious--as if they are setting out to forage for food or territory. Wondering when she stopped playing the toy piano [amazing the toy piano's resurgence in contemporary music!], Fay may be asking herself when she put aside whimsical piano playing--the fanciful "as if-ness" of child's play--for the acquiring of skills that will prepare her for equivalent foraging. This self reflection may be a musing about the place of creativity in a person's life. Is more foraging [work] perhaps needed, or the exact opposite; to balance the predominance of work, must attention be given to the free toy[ing] that is so essential to the creative process? Possibly one of the of the many subtexts of this beguiling haiku.
I, too,would like to vote for both! But if I choose only 1, it will be the reflective musing of Fay's haiku.