Autumn Rain

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autumn rain -
the smell of dead leaves and
mother earth



autumn butterfly -
a flurry of white
amongst the red roses



late autumn sunset -
the sickle moon pops up
behind a pine


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autumn rain -
the smell of dead leaves and
mother earth

I like this ku very much.
[dead leaves] is translated as ochiba 落葉。
I don't like the sound "Dead"
because the dead smells odd scent.

Can I have another English word ?

Sakuo

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Dear Sakuo san,
my husband just did kusakari, cutting the weeds and the whole garden smells lovely...

as for the dead leaves, I did not make it OCHIBA, fallen leaves, on purpose. It seems too .. light .. here for what I want to express.

I want to contrapose the dead-ness of late autumn with the life power of mother earth.
Also, I have autumn rain as a kigo, so ochiba would be another.

Ochiba, the falling leaves, for me are the read and colored leaves that whirl around in the wind and that I sweep away every day. In that way, they are still some sort of alive and moving around.

Dead leaves are the ones lying on the same place for a while, with rain and sun turning them to a rather black color. They do not move any more in the wind and just hang on to become compost for the next year. In that way they are motionless and dead.

And the dead leaves here smell wonderful ... of new promising things coming spring, of mushrooms growing inside their warmth now, of little insects and animals hiding under them ...

GABI

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Advise from an American friend:

I liked your explanation of your haiku and could smell the mulchy scent of rotting leaves. I agree than fallen leaves doesn't capture what you're trying to show. Your leaves are rotting, turning to mulch, turning back to the earth.

But the leaf is dying as soon as it breaks from the tree that feeds it. To be honest, I have a problem with 'dead' too, I think. According to your prose you saw 'blackened leaves'. Wouldn't this show death and mulchy rotting leaves too?

Does rain indicate late autumn in Japan? I did not see late autumn in its deadness at all. My own experiences are that rain and autumn create glistening colorful wet leaves.
I wonder if you shouldn't include 'late autumn rain' to make the picture blacker and less confusing with what we consider beautiful autumn, not dead at all. But it may be different in Japan! I'm thinking of my autumn rains.

late autumn rain—
the scent of Mother earth
and dead leaves

Or.. grin, 'blackened leaves" :-)

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From Isabelle:

To me, this ku is beautiful, just as it is, and "dead leaves" says to me just what Gabi explains in her reply.

The discussion did, however, make me wonder how best to convey the same idea in German. "Tote Blaetter" would probably hold the negative connotations raised in the discussion...

Herbstregen --
der Duft von verwesendem Laub und
der Mutter Erde

The idea is a kind of "living dead-ness"... as the rotting process leads to new life.


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. Fallen leaves (ochiba)


. Autumn Leaves (momiji) yellow leaves, colored leaves


Read my Haiku Archives from October 2006

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