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Basho, a great haiku master (possibly the greatest of all time) captured the stark aesthetic of the lone crow in one of his better known poems. His best known poem, by the way, concerns a frog jumping into a pond. It doesn't translate into english as well as it could... but the mood he captures is that of the stillness right after the 'Splash!' has been made. The same is true with the crow poem - the image is not that of a crow landing on a branch, but the quiet calm of the dark bird just perching there after settling. I have two translations of the poem, both of which try to capture that feeling.
A crow
has settled on a bare branch
Autumn evening
or
A lone crow
sits on a dead branch
this autumn eve
If you want the poem in japanese, it sounds something like this:
Kara eda ni
Karasu mo tomari keri
Aki no kure
My own translation (although I'm hardly fluent in japanese) runs something like this:
On a withered branch,
A crow has stopped
Autumn's eve
Okay.. enough Basho. Buson - another haiku master - also wrote a haiku about crows. This poem, however, paints a picture of crows gathering together at the end of a long day. Anyone who has watched the dark silhouettes of crows slowly fill a sunset kissed tree must have some idea of the feeling he intended to capture.
They end their flight
one by one--
crows at dusk
And I've got yet another crow haiku - written by Shiki Masaoka, around 1890-1902. I've also got the japanese 'translation' for it. (I'm sorry, I don't have the actual japanese, since I can't write out the kanji characters for it).
harusame no
dobei hi tomaru
karasu
which is...
perching on a mud wall
in the spring rain
a crow
I really like the imagery in that.
Anyways, if you know of any other crow or raven haikus, I'd love to hear about it. Feel free to email me!
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