Nicholas Hogg

HAIKU

For a week in Tokyo
I ate nothing
except the free samples
given out at fancy department stores.  

Octopus legs and squid,
the sweet bean cakes and strong green tea,
some heat in my bones.
Then I'd walk home in the neon frost, 

still hungry,
and think about Basho on the road near Fuji,
considering the wind and the rain,
how the withered grass shimmers

at the coming spring.
One time he wished
for the clothes of a tattered scarecrow.
Another night so cold 

that the rice jar cracked.
Well, in my cheap small room,
where the ice will form and the mould
will thrive, I heard the pot break. 

And then Basho rise,
picking up his cane and putting on his robe,
counting out the sounds
while he set them on the page.

Nicholas Hogg is the author of Show Me the Sky, and Tokyo, now in production as a Ridley Scott film. His short stories have won numerous prizes and been broadcast by the BBC. Winner of the 2021 Gregory O'Donoghue Poetry Prize, and twice shortlisted for the Eric Gregory Award for young poets, his most recent work features in Ambit, Bath Magg and The New European. www.nicholashogg.com @nicholas_hogg