Haiku of the day-Kobayashi Issa

Also from the Poetry Foundation, here is a haiku from Kobayashi Issa (1763–1828.) He lived a fairly tragic life as you can see from his bio and studied haiku in Edo. Edo, btw, is the original name for Tokyo and was the seat of the Tokugawa Shogunate which would still have been going strong during Issa's life-the Meiji Restoration occurs in 1868. Edo was one of the largest cities in the world at the time. The name means "bay entrance", appropriately.


Before the actual haiku though, a little about haiku because despite it being so simple, I can never remember the exact syllable count. It's 5, 7, 5. This site also tells me that Masaoka Shiki really created the form in the 1890's (haiku means "cutting") and Edo Period writers such as Issa are more properly called hokku. It looks like people also just refer to it as Classical versus Modern Haiku. 


Anyways, enjoy and evidently you can just ignore the 5,7,5 rule here:

[even with insects] by Kobayashi Issa

Even with insects—

some can sing,

    some can’t.