Shiki's distinctive vision and direct expression make a tone recognizably his own, conveyed beautifully in these pages' translations. We hear Shiki's haiku as the voice of a friend bringing complex news in a few intimate words. These haiku are drawn from a world that feels close to our own, and they bring our own lives and world closer. Shiki's poems are necessary and delicious as mountain water, carrying the mountain's hidden minerals from inside it to inside us. --Jane Hirshfield, author of The Heart of Haiku and The Ink Dark Moon

Last year's dream
I wake to this year's
reality

Shiki is considered by the Japanese as one of the masters of haiku. He radically reformed the haiku, suggesting sketching from life as an aesthetic.