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ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 191 offer windows through which the reader may look at things which he had not noticed before. As Ryokan wrote,
“You say my poems are poetry?
They are not. Yet if you understand they are not
Why, then you see the poetry!" They must be concrete. The thing itself is the meaning, and is not to be extracted from it, like saccharine from coal-tar. Finally, they should be written fast, as a sumiye painting. Just as the sumiye sketch, on quickly absorbent paper, permits no correction and no touchingup, so the haiku should be born in a moment, and spring complete from the pen.
The form is easy. Seventeen syllables in three lines in the rhythm of 5 : 7:5 produces the haiku form; the spirit, for our present purposes, must breathe the spirit of Zen. Here is my first attempt.
"My kakemono
Bangs the wall. The wall hears not,
Nor the wind, nor I." While taking my seat in a London theatre, I wrote,
“The rain falls outside;
The orchestra plays inside.
How the stage revolves!” This came apropos of nothing;
“This is happiness. Moonlight and the quiet pool And a sense of now."
