Five Autumn Haiku
by Yosa Buson
translated from Japanese by Joshua Gage

      
    in that direction,
    the sandpiper also rising…
    autumn evening
    
    						autumn wind…
    						in the barroom, reciting poems,
    						fishermen and woodcutters
    
    a beautiful woman sobs 
    in an inn amongst cogon grass…  
    a deer’s cries
    
    						the guardhouse
    						of a certain village engrossed 
    						with the harvest moon
    
    hazy night!
    somebody could be loitering
    in the pear orchard
    
Packingtown Review – Vol. 24, Fall 2025

Yosa Buson (he/him) (1716-1784) was a Japanese poet and painter of the Edo period. Along with Matsuo Bashō and Kobayashi Issa, Buson is considered among the greatest haiku poets of the Edo Period. He is also known for painting haiga, writing haibun, and experimenting with hybrid Chinese-Japanese poetry. Buson died at the age of 68; he is buried at Konpuku-ji temple in Kyoto.

Joshua Gage (he/him) is an ornery curmudgeon from Cleveland, Ohio. His newest chapbook, blips on a screen, is available on Cuttlefish Books. He is a graduate of the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Naropa University. He has a penchant for Pendleton shirts, Ethiopian coffee, and any poem strong enough to yank the breath out of his lungs.

  1. Kevin B
    The Wreck of the Sæbjörnfiction