What a beautiful choice to end the month and an apt one. Congratulations on this fine selection questioning the status quo. The argument the poems make is empirical and cumulative, and it reads as a love letter to all the possibilities of haiku when it is allowed to inhabit its full expressive range.
I have to go back and look through all the commentaries. For the longest time I had no idea there was a page for comments. I was used to seeing the haiku of the day on the front page but I never thought to click on it.
ある月夜 / ことごとく籠の / 虫を放つ aru tsukiyo kotogotoku kago no mushi wo hanatsu —Shiki One moonlit night I released every last bug From its cage —tr Keene
A good haiku with which to end the month.
Starting a sentence with ある (aru) is a classic narrative device, the equivalent of “once upon a…” or “on a certain …” Here, “on a certain moonlit night.” If Shiki were sketching from life in the present moment, he would simply say tsukiyo ya (“moonlit night!”). The verb hanatsu (放つ) is in the “dictionary form” (no tense modifier). Because it is preceded by “aru” it is read in the context of the past.
I don’t have a precise date for this verse but most likely it was written towards the very end of his life, around or after 1899 (there is another similar dated that year: “I released into the garden a caged insect that would not sing.” Very Zhuangzi—the Inner Chapters). We can readily picture Shiki writing this while he was confined terminally to bed with tuberculosis and spinal caries, looking back at a time when he was healthy enough to catch singing crickets. Now close to death, recalling with gladness that he released them.
It is one continuous sentence. There is no cutting word, nor a semantic cut. The verse documents a past moment. The poet and the reader bring to it the implied present, an implied present awareness, in the shape of recollection and revaluation by the poet in his present circumstance, and meditation and insight of the reader upon reading.
—-
This concludes the Haiku of the Day for May 2026. We’ve had many fine haiku:
—A week of verses that in essence are three (and can be more) separate elements: an harmonious arrangement of separate but related things.
—A week of verses expressed in a single sentence, usually a continuous sentence, that may have no marked or obvious semantic cut within it, but may nevertheless contain subtle juxtaposition or a shift in perspective.
—A week of verses that make excellent use of natural end-rhyme and/or internal rhyme, for its sonorous quality, its memorability; or subliminally to tie elements together across a verse.
—A week of verses that are essentially epigrams, maxims, aphorisms, proverbs, asserted as statements, ‘telling’ the reader, but sharing a flash of insight for readers to reconstitute in their ‘now.’.
—Half a week of verses indubitably in the past tense, to go with a couple of others we had earlier. Revisiting or re-living a past experience from the perspective of the present, and sharing an awareness of it with the reader. Sometimes inviting the reader to supply a thought in the present moment to complete the verse.
None of which is to gainsay that the majority of haiku published follow other patterns, conventions, and techniques, also powerful, and today better known. This month’s haiku can’t be brushed aside as ‘exceptions that prove the rule.’ They may be in the minority but there are many of them. I have more on file. Neither can it be said that they are insignificant, no more than a collector’s items. They are good, several of them great, haiku.
There are still anglophone haikuists who maintain that you can’t have, and shouldn’t write, such haiku as we have examined here. But look who did. It isn’t easy, but you can. If you revisit the great work of truly acclaimed haiku poets, ancient and modern, you may see and think for yourself.
What a beautiful choice to end the month and an apt one. Congratulations on this fine selection questioning the status quo. The argument the poems make is empirical and cumulative, and it reads as a love letter to all the possibilities of haiku when it is allowed to inhabit its full expressive range.
I have to go back and look through all the commentaries. For the longest time I had no idea there was a page for comments. I was used to seeing the haiku of the day on the front page but I never thought to click on it.
Thank you, Orense!
If you go to the introductory post I’ve added links to each commentary as they appeared: https://thehaikufoundation.org/intro-to-haiku-of-the-day-may-2026-loosening-the-shackles-on-haiku/
ある月夜 / ことごとく籠の / 虫を放つ
aru tsukiyo kotogotoku kago no mushi wo hanatsu
—Shiki
One moonlit night
I released every last bug
From its cage
—tr Keene
A good haiku with which to end the month.
Starting a sentence with ある (aru) is a classic narrative device, the equivalent of “once upon a…” or “on a certain …” Here, “on a certain moonlit night.” If Shiki were sketching from life in the present moment, he would simply say tsukiyo ya (“moonlit night!”). The verb hanatsu (放つ) is in the “dictionary form” (no tense modifier). Because it is preceded by “aru” it is read in the context of the past.
I don’t have a precise date for this verse but most likely it was written towards the very end of his life, around or after 1899 (there is another similar dated that year: “I released into the garden a caged insect that would not sing.” Very Zhuangzi—the Inner Chapters). We can readily picture Shiki writing this while he was confined terminally to bed with tuberculosis and spinal caries, looking back at a time when he was healthy enough to catch singing crickets. Now close to death, recalling with gladness that he released them.
It is one continuous sentence. There is no cutting word, nor a semantic cut. The verse documents a past moment. The poet and the reader bring to it the implied present, an implied present awareness, in the shape of recollection and revaluation by the poet in his present circumstance, and meditation and insight of the reader upon reading.
—-
This concludes the Haiku of the Day for May 2026. We’ve had many fine haiku:
—A week of verses that in essence are three (and can be more) separate elements: an harmonious arrangement of separate but related things.
—A week of verses expressed in a single sentence, usually a continuous sentence, that may have no marked or obvious semantic cut within it, but may nevertheless contain subtle juxtaposition or a shift in perspective.
—A week of verses that make excellent use of natural end-rhyme and/or internal rhyme, for its sonorous quality, its memorability; or subliminally to tie elements together across a verse.
—A week of verses that are essentially epigrams, maxims, aphorisms, proverbs, asserted as statements, ‘telling’ the reader, but sharing a flash of insight for readers to reconstitute in their ‘now.’.
—Half a week of verses indubitably in the past tense, to go with a couple of others we had earlier. Revisiting or re-living a past experience from the perspective of the present, and sharing an awareness of it with the reader. Sometimes inviting the reader to supply a thought in the present moment to complete the verse.
None of which is to gainsay that the majority of haiku published follow other patterns, conventions, and techniques, also powerful, and today better known. This month’s haiku can’t be brushed aside as ‘exceptions that prove the rule.’ They may be in the minority but there are many of them. I have more on file. Neither can it be said that they are insignificant, no more than a collector’s items. They are good, several of them great, haiku.
There are still anglophone haikuists who maintain that you can’t have, and shouldn’t write, such haiku as we have examined here. But look who did. It isn’t easy, but you can. If you revisit the great work of truly acclaimed haiku poets, ancient and modern, you may see and think for yourself.