Rexroth's Mosaics

The new moon has reached
The half. It is utterly
Incredible. One
Month ago we were strangers.

This beautiful hokku can be found in Rexroth's "Flower Wreath Hill" collection. According to the chapter notes the poem was written in Kyoto where Rexroth spent a fair amount of his later years studying and translating Japanese poetry. In many late sequences Rexroth went beyond the scope of many translators and infused his own work into longer renku fragments creating a subliminal medley as an homage to his subject culture.