Haiku

storm clouds--

homeless man shivers under

a newspaper coat



Most haiku in English consist of three unrhymed lines of seventeen or
fewer syllables, with the middle line longest, though today's poets use
a variety of line lengths and arrangements. In Japanese a typical haiku
has seventeen "sounds" (on) arranged five, seven, and five. (Some
translators of Japanese poetry have noted that about twelve syllables
in English approximates the duration of seventeen Japanese on.)
Traditional Japanese haiku include a "season word" (kigo), a word or
phrase that helps identify the season of the experience recorded in the
poem, and a "cutting word" (kireji), a sort of spoken punctuation that
marks a pause or gives emphasis to one part of the poem. In English,
season words are sometimes omitted, but the original focus on
experience captured in clear images continues

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