The poem below is one of Bashō’s most well-known.The author’s notation is sober and austere. Objective. There’s no lyrical tremor added to the text. Still, two parts of the poem vaguely take shape.
The second part, however, seems merely a dating of the event mentioned. Or perhaps the first part is just a fact set within the broader, more expansive atmosphere of an autumn dusk.
The dusk doesn’t appear out of nowhere—it is simply a complement, a completion of the event. Or the act of the crow is an expressive illustration of the autumn dusk.
on a dry branch
a crow has settled from its flight
autumn dusk
In the poem that follows, the author, Șerban Codrin, is from the outset more daring. Desolation is evoked through the lens of autumn. At first glance, the two elements of the scene seem entirely different—the season and an abandoned musical instrument. Yet their juxtaposition, precisely through its silence, suggests continuity, an escalation of desolation to the point of explosion. The damaged guitar can no longer even whimper. A wood fiber snaps—perhaps in solidarity with the unbearable situation. Perhaps as compensation for human helplessness, it is the wood itself—a symbol of inertia and passivity—that reacts.
autumn desolation –
inside the guitar one more fiber
snaps
The break in the text is clearly a provocation. An opportunity to ease a back-and-forth between the two parts. To call upon their suggestive powers and visionary slippage. It is no longer merely an image—from the beginning, it is only a pretext for a kind of story. The whole poem is pierced by a tremor of rebellion beyond human power. Nature takes its revenge.
