On the temple bellhas settled, and is fast asleep,a butterfly.
DAY1:
I like the image of the butterfly settling on top of the temple bell. Both things are fragile and delicate. They should be kept away from hands that would tear and throw, break and crush. They are two things I would keep inside my own thickset of a box or anything that would keep them unscathed, not to be touched or even not to be known by any other being. They are like my heart, like any other heart, beautiful and inevitable to break.
DAY2:
Butterflies are things associated with freedom and spontaneity. I was a butterfly once. I passed forbidden forests, glided through undiscovered meadows, had motorcycle-rides in a foreign road, sat in front of a bonfire set in an alien land, slept and woke up in a bed not my own. I had smelt air not from the place I call home, grazed at grasses I have not trodden, had been under a different sky for one full day.
Now, I am at home. I creep once again inside my cocoon.
DAY3:
Babochka is the Russian name for butterfly. It is a word that is somewhat symbolic to the Russians since there was this old belief that the souls of people who died got into butterflies. I have also read that there is even a dialect word Dushichka for the same insect. Dushichka means a little soul. We are often visited by brown butterflies. Whenever we find one perched in the sala curtain or clinging its slender legs on the wall like a nailed portrait, Papa would tell us that it is our Lolo Demit or Tito Halsey visiting and blessing us.
Maybe at night, when all are in deep slumber, butterflies throng in cemeteries to come back to their graves and that place would be full of shredded wings in the morning.
DAY4:
When I read the poem again, one thing fascinated me—it was the image of the sleeping butterfly. The butterfly may well be a symbol for another thing. One thing that would come to mind is that of a beautiful sleeping woman. If this is so, this could be one erotic poem Basho had written. I will tell you what I have in mind: a beautiful Japanese woman lying with her straight raven tresses on the temple floor. Her satin robe sliding on one side of her shoulder blade to expose flesh, one leg bare, a silent predator waiting for the next victim that would fall under her temptation.
DAY5:
It was a very interesting thing to think that the butterfly in this haiku is actually a symbol for a beautiful woman as mysterious as a memory from the past. It can be that Basho, reminiscing his acquaintanceship with a woman, has written this haiku out of his praise of her beauty. It could be that he was captivated by her physical beauty and vixen ways that he had actually fallen in love with her.
She really must be that beautiful that a great poet had her as his muse.
DAY6:
I searched through the net if Basho had a fondness of butterflies and I found out something quite intriguing, and somehow conform to every assumption I had in mind. Basho had met a woman by the name of Lady Butterfly. It was said that she had been a woman of pleasure before she was taken as second wife by a haiku-loving husband. She was the perfect mistress. A silent predator indeed. When she had requested Basho to compose a haiku for her on his return to visit her husband, she was again weaving an intricate web of desire that only she can take reign.
DAY7:
I LOVE THE IDEA OF HAVING A POET AS A LOVER.
Not so that there would be someone who would recite me a poem whenever we make love, or would serve me tea in cups with poetic doodling when I wake up, or would teach my kid (if, and only if, I can be convinced that the only essence of being a woman is to bear a child) how to recite Blake’s The Tyger, or have someone to encourage me to read Longinus’ On the Sublime again.
What I like is to be the force that would cast my lover-poet into fine frenzy.
He to create great poems in praise of me.
