passing clouds…
a little sparrow ignores
sudden passerby
Comment: a haiku with a smart juxtaposition which links the passing of the clouds in the first ku 句 to that of a passerby along the road in the second one. This overall sense of levity and transience is emphasized by the alliteration of a sharp, fleeting ‘s’ sound, in a context of fueki ryūkō 不易流行 (‘constancy and change’) where the only figure that seems to be immune (or rather indifferent) to change is just that of the sparrow (suzume 雀) in line 2.
I do really like the haiku!
Our home is also home to dozens of sparrows where we’ve protected the roof rafters recently to allow them to keep coming every year.
But I do have one small suggestion:
re:
passing clouds…
a little sparrow ignores
sudden passerby
I feel that in this English version it really needs a grammatical article (a, an, the) in the last line, or passerby can be made into the plural…
e.g.
passing clouds…
a little sparrow ignores
the sudden passerby
or
passing clouds…
a little sparrow ignores
sudden passersby
I was approached to create a piece about grammatical articles in haiku:
http://area17.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-definite-and-indefinite-article-how.html
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