Cawing of a Crow - Reflections from the Cremation Fire

"The cawing of a crow -
I also am alone."

Santōka

Alone

A poet of free-style haiku, Santōka Taneda's life was plagued by instability. Born Taneda Shōichi in Japan to a wealthy family, he unfortunately lost his mother to suicide when he was 11 years old. As he grew older, he struggled with drinking to excess and nervous breakdowns, but sought catharsis through poetry.

The young college drop-out studied with skilled haiku masters and took the pen-name Santōka, meaning fire of the cremation ground, possibly in homage to his deceased mother. His father went bankrupt while Santōka was away from home. While inventing himself as a poet, Santōka married and divorced, then lost his father to untimely death.

Following a suicide attempt, Santōka ordained as a Zen priest. He died at age 58 in his sleep. We here weave the tumultuous twists and turns of Santōka's life into a brief treatment of one of his short poems.

The Cawing of a Crow

Reflecting the loneliness that haunted him since childhood, the cawing of the crow and the solitary Santōka are situated on the far ends of the poem, which both opens and closes with two characters in Kanji (originally Chinese ideograms, imported to Japan) and six syllables of Hiragana script in the interim.

鴉啼いてわたしも一人

Of these, the pieces 鴉啼 (the crow's caw) and 一人 (lone person) stand on separate ends of a desolate field, shorn of autumn harvest, now barren and bleak. This image could only have come close to capturing the loneliness of Santōka's life.

Reflections from the Cremation Fire

In an era like ours, plagued as it is by environmental degradation and fires raging across the globe, a virus claiming the lives of more than a million while limiting our capacity to connect in person, civil rights abuses and political strife sowing the seeds of distrust throughout societies, and far more avoidable tragedies, contemplative poetry from the likes of Santōka offer their solidarity.

As we find ourselves increasingly faced with scalding challenges, burning through whatever remains of our sanity, we can perhaps find solace in being alone together in these times. Despite all that divides and separates us, we still gather around the proverbial fire from afar.

Santōka's crow caws at a distance. I am also alone, he replies. Thus are his reflections from the cremation fire. To be continued...