morning light
a crow describes
loneliness
Comment: a haiku full of wabi 侘 in which the unification of environment and emotions (keijō itchi 景情一致) relies on the key figure of the crow (karasu 烏) in line 2, as already happened in the following well-known haiku by Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694), written in 1681: kareeda ni karasu no tomarikeri aki no kure 枯枝に鴉のとまりけり秋の暮れ (‘the crow has stopped/ on a dead branch/ autumn dusk). The faint light in the morning (hakumei 薄明) in the first ku seems to illuminate a desolate and silent landscape; only the bird (and the poet, who merely observes) stands as a symbol of life, substantiating a deep but not necessarily negative loneliness.
