Love

your life and mine united in love - mimosa branches dein Leben und mein Leben in Liebe vereint - Mimosenzweige you and me - mimosa branches 君在りて　我また在りて　ミモザかな

The Japanese is a translation by Onohi san. Thank you so much!
June 2005


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What KIGO does to my love !!


This is a short musing about love
and what our kigo can do to it.

It all started with me watching the mimosa branches for a while, suddenly coming up with the haiku above.

This was a simple but special present to my husband, nothing more, sort of given to me by the mimosa itself.

My German friends thought as a haiku it was too obvious, stating it all, leaving no part for imagination or association. So I changed it to

you
and me -
Mimosa branches



du
und ich –
Mimosenzweige


This was better! Now there was the love between the lines and the reader could add up his own imagination, take part of the interpretation, well, it was even considered worth for publication in the WHR.

But I refused.

Such minimal haiku are not my style.


And this got me working on it. If the two lines represent the love between the lines, well, how about this one then?

. . . . .



you
and I –
cold coffee

cold coffee is a nonseasonal topic, while its colder cousin, ice coffee is a kigo for summer.

http://worldkigodatabase.blogspot.com/2005/09/iced-coffee-aisu-koohii-japan.html

But in the haiku above, what had happened to the love between the lines?
Cold coffe, a hot cup gotten cold, stale, yakks… Kalter Kaffee in German has even more negative meaning. There is a lot between the lines here too, but certainly not the simple and pure love from the first version of the haiku.



. . . . .



you
and I –
summer heat


This is definitely a kigo for summer, but there we might associate the relationship not so much with love, more with lust… and leaving the next morning without even knowing the name of the other one…



. . . . .



you
and I –
three black raven


Raven itself is a nonseasonal topic, but somehow here the haiku gets a different flavor again. THREE, what is happening to the relationship now?
http://worldkigodatabase.blogspot.com/2005/03/crow-karasu.html



. . . . .



you
and I –
cold coming back


Here we have a kigo for spring, when the cold is coming back
and the feeling of desolation is even greater.
http://happyhaiku.blogspot.com/2005/03/cold-coming-back.html



Somehow the love seems gone, and not even to be found between the lines any more….

. . . . .

I could go on like that with more kigo, but let me stop here.


you
and I –



This alone is not enough to read between the lines about a simple, pure love.



I guess you see by now, the kigo is very important to set the underlying mood of a sentence, a couple of words, the other two lines in a haiku.
The meaning between the lines depends a lot on the meaning of the kigo, which sets the general mood of a haiku.
Therefore it is important to know which mood a certain kigo is setting and then use this mood skillfully.


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