Puns – Haibun – March 15, 2016

I’ve been labouring over a prompt for days, trying to figure out what to write a pun in haiku form about.  Today, March 15, a fellow blogger Jules Paige, sent me an interesting bit of information about how the Romans read their calendar … which included the famous Ides of the year … which were supposed to be determined by the full moons at mid-month which usually fell around the thirteenth of the month except for March, May, July and October when they fell on the fifteenth.

the Ides of March
taunted the seer said:
remains to be seen

© G.s.k. ‘16

°°°°°°°°°

the year’s first snowfall
the cat bats at the window
to catch the snow birds.

each suburban lawn
a page in fall’s manuscript
burnished with gold leaves.

pierced by falcon claws
red feathers on the white snow
a cardinal sin.

 

Carpe Diem #937 Robe

“Japanese poets were master punsters. We have many of the same opposrtunities for puns in English, but contemporary haiku writers may not be as well versed as the Japanese are in using this technique because there have been periods of Western literary history when this skill has been reviled. And even though the hai of haiku means “joke, or fun, or unusual”, there are still writers who frown when they encounter a pun in three lines. Basho didn’t use the technique much because he was against the overuse of the method by the two other haikai schools of his time. Translators shy away from pun verses because they rarely work in the target language and long explanations can be tiresome to write and read. Fortunately the above haiku by Basho, works in both languages.” By Chèvrefeuille