Though it can never fly

Though it can never

fly in the sky, put my wife

upon this carpet

• Haiku by Michio Nakahara translated by James Kirkup from “Message from Butterfly”, cartoon by Old Pond Comics.

This cartoon was published in Haidan (November 2016) in Japan.

Old Pond Comics – “On” sound in traditional haiku

Traditional haiku consist of 17 on (also known as morae), in three phrases of 5, 7 and 5 on respectively [1]. Although haiku are often stated to have 17 syllable, it is important to understand that syllables and on are not the same [2].

1. Lanoue, David G. Issa, Cup-of-tea Poems: Selected Haiku of Kobayashi Issa, Asian Humanities Press, 1991, ISBN 0-89581-874-4 p.8

2. Cor van den Heuvel. The Haiku Anthology, 2nd edition, Simon & Schuster, 1986, ISBN 0-671-62837-2 p.11