Seferis and Friend

Here is a little grab from Seferis' notebooks about his cat. He looked at the fire. Right on.

“ … grieving for Ramazan. He was my only friend in Ankara, a friend of my own. I can’t explain the hyperbolic, the unexpected, the irrational state into which the loss of this small creature has plunged me. It is the circumstance of this little death perhaps; as if he waited for us before dying. Then, I don’t know, such a death makes you see the void—that place of his on the grape arbor—from another angle, smaller but clearer, in a more naked way; it is another thing, the ghost of an animal; without resurrection; an absolute loss. The earth seemed horribly inhuman Friday afternoon. Such dignity in the way he went off to die. He sought the sun constantly, he looked at the fire.”

George Seferis: Haiku

Here’s a quick take from the journal of George Seferis. Interesting enough read. Much about his work as a diplomat. And a few entries on Mrs. Zen - this curious little figurine he made out of a walnut shell.

Kikakou, one of Basho’s pupils, presented this haiku to his master:

Look, a dragonfly,
remove its wings—
a pepper tree.

“We mustn’t abuse nature,” Basho scolded and told him to reverse the haiku if he wanted to make it better:

Look, a pepper tree
add wings –
a dragonfly.