Don't worry, spiders
I keep house
casually.
Goes out,
comes back--
the loves of a cat.
Climb Mount Fuji,
O snail,
but slowly, slowly.
Mosquito at my ear--
does it think
I'm deaf?
In this world
we walk on the roof of hell,
Gazing at flowers.
Blossoms at night,
and the faces of people
moved by music.
All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
killing mosquitoes.
A good world--
the dewdrops fall
by ones, by twos.—Haiku by Kobyashi Issa (1763-1827), in The Essential Haiku, pp. 153-55, 158, 163, 165, 179