Haru samushi

春寒し/水田の上の/根なし雲
(河東碧梧桐 1873-1937)

haru samushi / mizuta no ue no / ne nashi-gumo
(Kawahigashi Hekigoto 1873-1937)

spring cold:
a cloud without roots
over the paddy field


I like the way Kawahigashi juxtapositions the cloud, ready to be blown in who knows what direction by the cold spring winds, with the fixed paddy field, going nowhere. The cloud is ready to move, and it will move, but this transient moment of it hovering over the field is captured in the haiku's word picture. So there's a tension (which I suppose is part of the haiku spirit) between the fixed words of the poem, and the impermanence of the moment.

I found some interesting information about Hekigoto at this page. It seems he knew Masaoka Shiki (six years older), when he was a boy and was taught baseball by him (Shiki was a big baseball fan and wrote some tanka about the sport). He became a disciple of Shiki and further loosened the rules of haiku by getting rid of the 5-7-5 count for lines, a style that became known as 新傾向俳句 ('shin keiko haiku' or literally 'New Trend Haiku'). However, you've probably noticed the above poem sticks to the traditional pattern.

Alternate searches:

'nenashi gumo', 'nenashigumo'