Issa

Kobayashi Issa (小林一茶) or just Issa (June 15, 1763 - January 5, 1828), by the way also the Arabic name for Jesus, is one of my favourite poets. He is one of the great four Japanese Haiku poets besides Bashô, Buson and Shiki. I like him because I sense his melancholy. His mother died when he was three, his grandmother, who raised him, when he was fourteen. He wandered through Japan. Got back, got a wife. All of his children died soon after birth and finally his wife died too. He wrote one of his most famous haiku at the time when his first daughter died:

The world of dew --
A world of dew it is indeed,
And yet, and yet . . .

One of my favourite poems of Issa is:

夜神楽や焚火の中へちる紅葉

yokagura ya takibi no naka e chiru momiji

In English:

Shinto dance at night--
red leaves fall
into the bonfires

It has even more power in German:

Ein Tempeltanz nachts:
Es stiebt ins Feuer hinein
Das rote Herbstlaub.