Carpe Diem #769 Niji (rainbow)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Another nice classical kigo for summer is on the agenda today. Today it's, niji (rainbow), and as I started preparing this episode of our beloved haiku family I realized that we have had rainbow several times earlier here ... I wasn't aware of that as I prepared the prompt-list, because I only had looked for the classical kigo in the past years of CDHK. So this episode will be a short one.

I love to start with a haiku by Kobayashi Issa, one of the four greatest haiku poets ever, about niji or rainbow:

hiru neru ni yoshi to iu hi ya niji hajime

a noon nap
on a good day...
first rainbow

© Kobayashi Issa

Isn't it a wonderful haiku, however it's not certain if this haiku was written in summer, because niji can also be a spring kigo.
And I found another wonderful haiku by Issa (by the way both haiku, the above and the next, are translated by David G. Lanoue)

kakitsubata yori ano niji wa okoriken

irises--
where that rainbow
starts from

© Kobayashi Issa

This haiku needs a little explanation, a very nice (and clever) explanation: Issa imagines that the rainbow has arisen from blooming irises--the intense, showy colors of the flowers continuing in bold streks upward, into the sky, forming the rainbow. It's interesting that "iris" derives from the Greek word for "rainbow." Issa could not have known this, but he intuits the same connection that exists in many Western languages. The rainbow is a flower in the sky; irises are rainbows on earth.

Well ... I hope you have inspiration enough to write/compose an all new haiku. I hadn't the inspiration to come up with something new, so I love to share an "oldie" ... a haiga ...

© Chèvrefeuille

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until July 8th at noon (CET). I will (try to) publish our new episode, hikage (shade, shadow), later on. For now ... have fun!