MITSUAKI KOJIMA

Shining silently overhead, the full moon seems almost touchable.

Google, the Internet company, recently offered a prize worth up to $25 million to anyone who can get a land rover to do some stuff on the moon.

According to the translator R.H. Blyth, Masaoka Shiki wrote this poem about a Japanese monkey who seemed to have a similar goal in mind.

Nagaki yo o tsuki toru saru no shian kana

The long night
monkey dreams how to
catch the moon

The master poet sympathized with the monkey who appeared to be meditating on the problem of how to grab an autumn moon hanging close to the tree branches.

Describing the mysterious remote nearness of the moon in poetry is an oxymoronic technique.

The original Japanese poem was translated into a 3-5-3 syllable form in English.

Eric Kimura arranged clouds into 5-7-5 syllable poems while flying home to Hawaii.

Fanciful cloudscapes
speed by my moonlit window
while jet engines roar

Yutaka Kitajima composed two haiku poems about the moon dedicated to the launch of the lunar explorer Kaguya from Tanegashima island.

The moon explorer was named for the heroine Kaguya-hime, a princess from the moon in a children's story "The Tale of the Bamboo-Cutter."

The romantic naming captured Kitajima's heart.

Explorer
Kaguya loaded
with love poems

A girl sighs
her hair combed softly
by moonlight

Satoru Kanematsu shares an island poem.

Shooting star
heads for Jamaica
far away

The burning sun commands our respect in summer, but the moon captures our soul in autumn.

Horst Ludwig entered a cathedral during the heat of the day, lighting a candle in prayer.

American poet Kaifi Jamil and German poet Gerd Boerner, in respective order, use personification in their alluring poems.

At Saint Michael's
a candle's lit for a friend
Sunny the May sky

Her eyes shining
dark and absorbing--
the night's beauty

The full moon
pushes open the door
woman with pink pearls

The sun comes up each day, but we have to search the sky for the moon.

German poet Wolfgang Beutke offers an exceptional case.

After watching last month's full moon, Kanematsu went to bed completely satisfied.

Solar eclipse
the momentum
of silence

Perfect moon
after the eclipse
good night's sleep

Marco Fraticelli tried composing a haiku on just two lines about his favorite sport and the Canadian geese which are currently migrating south in V-shaped formation past his Montreal home.

Perhaps the poet's serve has also been swerving on the court.

Between my serves
geese leaving

Want to try composing haiku ?

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The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear Oct. 6 and 20. Mail haiku with autumnal season words to David McMurray at the International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun, 5-3-2 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-8011, fax 03-5541-8539, or e-mail <is@asahi.com>.