re: Virals 514

Welcome to re:Virals, The Haiku Foundation’s weekly commentary feature on some of your favorites among the best contemporary haiku and senryu written in English.  In the host chair today is Keith Evetts. This week’s poem, chosen by Dan Campbell was:

   
nightfall
slipping into the pond
without a splash
—Simon Hanson
  The Heron’s Nest, June 2025 

Introducing this poem, Dan Campbell writes:

I like this image of night slipping into place so smoothly you barely notice. That last line, without a splash, says it all. There’s no noise, no fuss—just stillness. It reminds you of how much beauty there is in small, ordinary moments—like the way the world changes from day to night without asking for attention. That kind of quiet transition is easy to miss, but this poem captures it perfectly. It’s a great example of what haiku does best: keeping things simple, staying grounded in nature, and offering a brief pause to notice what we usually overlook.

Opening comment (Keith):

This seasonless verse pays tangential homage to Bashō’s frog jumping into the sound of water.   As it is drafted, it can be read as an ichibutsujitate (tailored to one thing or theme) with nightfall as the subject of ‘slipping’, or as a juxtaposition where nightfall is the setting for the poet, and by extension the reader, slipping into the pond.  The frequently-used present participle can be, and often is, deployed by poets in anglophone haiku for various reasons.  To suggest personification/animism without being indictable for it, or to extend a moment over a period of time beyond the simple present tense, or to provide ambiguity with the intention of engaging the reader and suggesting the option of other interpretations, are some of them. Or here, with “slipping” in mid-dangle, perhaps all of the above.

An early treatise on participles in haiku, by Paul Miller in Modern Haiku, here.

The verse emanates serenity, and its first two lines have a hint of mystery or yugen, before the reader gets to the final line “without a splash” where one’s first reaction, if taking ‘nightfall’ as the subject of slipping, is “well, of course.”  However… aside from prompting thoughts of Bashō’s poem, it also led me to consider the questions: does nightfall enter the water? Does darkness enter the water? Or does light leave the water? When light enters the water, is there indeed no splash? Photons themselves don’t produce sound. Sound is a mechanical wave that requires a medium to propagate, while light (if I recall correctly) is an electromagnetic wave that can travel through a vacuum. However, photons, though officially without mass, can interact with matter and their energy can cause it to vibrate, which can theoretically produce sound. So if a molecule of water absorbed photons and was displaced, it would be producing a vibration by bumping into other molecules (cue the faint sound of a simmering pan fired by a laser, perhaps?…) However,  in a pond this would be indistinguishable from any other small random motions of water molecules, so it would not produce a distinct sound even if we could detect such faint disturbances with a measuring instrument, never mind the human ear.

Having settled that, I was left with the reasoning that night only appears to be entering, or slipping into, the pond.  The light of day is absorbed by the pond, and with nightfall no further light arrives.  The process, like contemplation, is silent and gradual…

The other interpretation, if reading a cut by the linefeed after ‘nightfall,’ is that the poet, physically or in his mind, is slipping into the pond “without a splash”  in respectful tune with the hush of nightfall. And for the morbidly-inclined haikuist, a hint of death… becoming one with the cold dark.

Either way a pleasing and engaging verse for meditation.

A little on Bashō’s frog, and some digression, in the Footnote.

Alan Harvey:

It’s impossible to read Hanson’s haiku without referencing the classic Bashō: old pond. . . / a frog jumps in / water’s sound.  But contrasting it is where it lives.

From http://poemananalysis.com:

“The old pond seems to be a symbol of the subconscious mind. It is there inside everyone. Like the old pond, it exists in silence. Moreover, the poet refers to the subconscious mind of an old person. Here, the old man is undoubtedly the poet himself.”

As any practitioner of meditation knows, thoughts slip into the mind during meditation with ease. So, contrasting a belly-flopping, fat frog, nightfall slips in quietly or without a splash.

Nightfall gradually slips into the pond in quiet increments even when the sky is bathed in glorious colors.

Leena Anandhi:

As somebody living in south of India, we’ve had a pretty standard pattern of day/night and nightfall around 6 to 7. We know it gets dark around that time and we plan our activities and brace up to head back home. And then we travelled to Frankfurt during our summer vacations close to the summer solstice and suddenly there was no awareness of time as we would reckon by the sunlight. The day seemed to extend inordinately and then suddenly quiet like a thief creeping in- it is dusk. It takes you by surprise, just as we begin to accept the gift of extra sunshine— it seems to say—enough—now you have to call it a day! This haiku for me relives that experience. Slipping into the night without fanfare quietly but quickly nevertheless.

Pamela Garry:

Simon Hanson’s beautiful haiku reminds me of a haiga I just completed; and so I can relate to it vividly. My watercolor painting is of a nightfall sky where the clouds resemble a busy pod of belugas, and the setting sun glows between them. The relatively still refection in the water of this vibrant sky reminded me of the silence and the perfect ten when a dive has no splash. I turned my painting into a haiga with this haiku:
quiet twilight
a heavenly lullaby

Sudha Devi Nayak—a quiet slip into oblivion:

A beautiful evocative haiku that tells us the day has drawn to a close, and the night has fallen on the world. The image of nightfall slipping soundlessly into the waters of the pond carries the echo of Bashō’s much celebrated and anthologised poem of the pond and the splash created by the frog, a little creature that can cause a stir in nature. Here there is no splash, a quiet slipping into oblivion.

Life has come full circle for the day with its labours and pains, its aspirations and longings, its fulfilments and disappointments. The world rests in the night, and as the Irish priest and philosopher John O’Donohue says, trees, fields, people lose their definition, released from the confines of shape and burden of exposure. Darkness absolves everything; the struggle for identity and impression.  A surrender and pause for reflection. Till it starts all over tomorrow, and till it is time to call it a day.  And the night dips into the pond.

Author Simon Hanson:

I am fortunate to reside within a stone’s throw of a large pond in a quiet forested area of Lutruwita (Tasmania). At the moment the pond is teeming with tadpoles, soon to be frogs which will likely attract a tiger snake or two and various predatory birds including kookaburras. It is frequently visited by native ducks and is one of the foraging places of a shy and secretive platypus. The many moods of the pond coinciding with the weather, time of day or night and of the season are a special kind of pleasure. Visually the sky is a prominent feature in this, as are the eucalypts, bracken fern and grasses that line its edges all faithfully reflected in the clear water, albeit upside down. It looks as if there are two skies; sometimes blue, other times adrift in cirrus, billowed in greys or swept in dawn or sunset colours. Passing birds frequently fly across its mirror, fleetingly recorded in real time and dragonflies hover and dart, above and below, in perfect symmetry accompanied by flashes of iridescence. Whether in stillness itself or blown about by the breeze, its many shadows do their shadowy things.

On overcast nights the pond is deeply dark, black as black and extra caution is in order unless one is inclined to swimming; however, the water is cold and I mean cold. On rare occasions the pond freezes over, but not so solidly as to tempt ice skating, which is a disappointment as that is an old love of mine. Some nights it is moon shone or starry speckled and seems to quiver as if it were a living thing. Stillness has its own loveliness and evokes its own kind of contemplation and mystery, though at times the boy within cannot resist shaking it all with a skimming stone just to see the moon ripple in glints and glimmers.

I am particularly taken by the play of light in all manner of situations and especially by the play of light in water. And so, this brings us to the genesis of this haiku— an especially still evening, sunset hued in oranges, pinks, crimsons, greys and colours for which I have no words. And essentially, as sunsets do, unfolding by degrees so gradual as to be indiscernible, a progression of colours slipping into darkness. The ephemeral nature of light in water, filling its space without imposing on its volume is a thing of fascination, what is a meter above the surface appears to be a meter below, its images suspended at their allotted depth in a kind of watery crystal.

Initially aiming to (simply) touch upon something of the beauty of the scene I discovered the opportunity in wording the haiku to add a touch of humour and so toyed with the idea of slipping into the pond… without a splash, as would indeed be difficult if one were talking about ordinary bodies of mass, but here it is nightfall rendered in light that slips into the pond. In writing haiku, I sometimes find things that were not originally intended but seem to have surfaced of their own accord (from the unconscious perhaps), surprising and welcomed— and here we slip into mystery, with or without a splash…

I hope there is enough interpretative space here for the reader to sit or explore their own pond in their own way, to sense their own nightfall whatever that may be; literal, picturesque, metaphoric or symbolic…

Thanks to all who sent commentaries. As the contributor of the commentary reckoned best this week, Sudha Devi Nayak has chosen next week’s poem, which you’ll find below. We invite you to write a commentary to it. It may be short, or of moderate length, academic, your personal response, spontaneous, or idiosyncratic.  As long as it focuses on the verse presented, and with respect for the poet, all genuine reader reaction, criticism, and pertinent discussion is of value.   Out-takes are kept in the THF Archives.  Best of all, the chosen commentary’s author gets to pick the next poem.

Anyone can participate. Simply use the re:Virals commentary form below to enter your commentary on the new week’s poem (“Your text”) by the following Tuesday midnight, Eastern US Time Zone, and then press Submit to send your entry. The Submit button will not be available until Name, Email, and Place of Residence fields are filled in. We look forward to seeing your commentary and finding out about your favourite poems.

Poem for commentary:

     
in search of attachment
a green tendril
waving in stillness
—Jeffrey Ferrara
 The Mainichi Haiku in English, June 7th, 2025

Footnote:

Previously Secretary to the Australian Haiku Society, Simon Hanson is currently co-editor of Echidna Tracks: Australian Haiku. He has a number of collections and offers this link to Desert Stones published by Snapshot Press as a sample, enjoy…

—–
Received after the deadline from Lynn Kane:

This lovely poem prompted a delicious double take for me. I first read “nightfall” as a scene-setting fragment and felt free to wonder what creatures might be entering the water so smoothly – including myself. Reading a second time, I saw the possibility of nightfall itself “slipping into the pond….,” a discovery that spurred a sense of surprise and delight. The poem engages the reader with sight (an implied dimming of the light – “nightfall”), sensation (“slipping”) and sound (or, more precisely, the lack of it – “without a splash”). The aural character of the poem is an additional strength, ending as it does with a hushing sound: “sh.” This is a poem that will stick with me.

Bashō’s frog, and a foray into sensory fusion or synaesthesia:

There are dozens of translations of the famous haiku, furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto:  literally “old pond / frog jumps into sound of water.” An important part of it is the position of the cutting-word or kireji, ya, which as written by Bashō is after furuike or ‘old pond.’ There is no cut between ‘frog jump in’ and ‘the sound of water’ as rendered by several translators. In short, it is:

old pond —
a frog jumps in(to) the sound of water

and not:
old pond
a frog jumps in —
the sound of water

still less:
old pond
a frog jumps in—
splash!

…as some have rendered it.

This week’s verse has a cross-sensory aspect in that we have vision/light-or-its-absence, and audition/sound-and-its-absence.  Although the full flowering of sensory transference, or sensory fusion, or the later term synaesthesia, is usually attributed to Bashō, it was the subject of experiment in classic haiku by others before or around the same time:

shigure kiku / nioi wa ume no / saki-gake ya
hearing winter rain / the scent of plum blossoms / leads the way!
—Teitoku, early 1600s. A fusion of hearing and olfaction, the rain that is heard accentuates the scent of the blossom.

yūgao ya / koe ni tsutsumare / yoru no kaze
moonflower— / veiled in the voice / (of) the night wind.
—Sōin , around 1670s.

And at roughly the same time:

ame no oto / yoru no shita ni / yuki no iro
sound of rain / beneath the night— / the color of snow
—Saikaku ca. 1670s:

Bashō too experimented with cross-senses in early work, for example
furu oto ya / mimi mo sū-naru / ume no ame
—Bashō, spring of 1666. Reichhold gives this literally as “falling sound – / ear also sour become / plum rain.” However, I have niggling doubts: “ume no ame” is an early spring kigo reflecting the time when plums bloom rather than when they are as yet green and sour on the tree, if I recall correctly (the kigo for sour or green plums is ao-ume 青梅).  The central part, according to language references, is more like “ears also absorb” or “the ear too becomes quiet”. Although this verse is said to be suggestive of synaesthesia, it may not seem a sure-fire example.

Two seminal verses by Bashō deploying full-fledged synaesthesia were published at about the same time: in the winter of 1684-85, umi kure te / kamo no koe / honoka ni shiroshi:  literally “sea darken / duck ’s voice / faintly white” was published in the Journal of Bleached Bones in a Field (note: Reichhold places the duck poem in 1681 but other sources have it as 1684-5).   And ‘old pond,’ which in the spring of 1686 placed top in the Kawazu Awase anthology (frog contest) in Edo (cf. Barnhill and other sources).  It appeared in Haru no Hi (“Spring Day”), one of the seven haikai anthologies (Haikai Shichibushu) compiled by Bashō’s circle, edited by Kakei Yamamoto, and published in 1686.

The various English translations of ‘old pond’ have spawned hundreds of take-offs or honkadori, as per the honoured tradition of referencing earlier literary works, particularly in English language haiku where it is often the basis of humour. One of my favourites in this genre appeared in Failed Haiku #70:
old pond
nine iron
sound of water
—Ann Smith

In the case of this week’s verse, we have a honkadori of a different, philosophical order, a verse that reflects on the nature of light and dark, on  water, and on sound and motion by their absence.

re:Virals is co-hosted by Shawn Blair, Melissa Dennison, Susan Yavaniski, and Keith Evetts (managing editor).

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