triveni spotlight: 7th June 2025
- Mohua
- Jun 7
- 2 min read
triveni spotlight A FEATURE EVERY ALTERNATE DAY hosts: Anju Kishore and Mohua Maulik GUEST EDITOR: Kashiana Singh
7th June 2025
triveni spotlight June 2025
after the funeral
whiskers still
in his razor
—Becky Barnhart
Haiku Society of America Haiku Award 2024
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Mono no Aware: The Tenderness of Ending
In Japanese tradition, jisei—death poems composed by individuals on the brink of death—offer final reflections on life, impermanence, and the unknown beyond. Often brief, stark, and yet tender, these poems do not resist death but instead accept it as part of the natural rhythm of existence. Through nature imagery and minimalism, jisei endure as a person's final parable, their distilled teaching to those left behind.
Haiku, too, teaches us to see each moment as both a birth and a death. In its nakedness, haiku captures the bardo moments described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead—transitions between realms, between states of being. Every moment we live contains the seed of both beginning and ending.
The Japanese aesthetic of mujo (impermanence) and mono no aware ("the beauty of transient things") is naturally embedded in haiku, urging us to see not tragedy, but tenderness in the inevitable cycle of change.
In Indian philosophy, this cycle of life, death, and rebirth—samsara—is also seen as a sacred, continuous flow. Death is not a rupture but a return, part of the great wheel of existence. Acceptance of transitions, whether through mourning rituals, river immersions, or the lighting of a pyre, reflects a deep understanding that endings are inseparable from beginnings.
Thus, haiku echoes a universal wisdom across ancient cultures: to live is to move through endless openings and closings, with tenderness for what must pass.
Haiku strips away all but the essence. A poet can express an entire cosmos of grief, gratitude, and wisdom in just a few words. In contemplating death through haiku, we are also contemplating life—its urgency, tenderness, and fleeting beauty.
Through the acceptance of death, we are offered not despair but profound connection: to one another, to the seasons, and the moment-by-moment act of living.
This month, i bring to you a selection of haiku that speak directly to the themes of death, loss, rebirth, and the bittersweet beauty of transience
Kashiana Singh
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Our thanks to Kashiana Singh, this month’s guest editor, for her selection on a theme that is inextricably linked to all our lives. Poets, we are sure you will find the poems and the write up engaging and thought-provoking. Don't forget to share your thoughts in the comments.
_()_ triveni spotlight team
HSA 2004 Judges:
William Cullen Jr. & Brenda J. Gannam
Second Place:
after the funeral
whiskers still
in his razor
Becky Barnhart
https://www.hsa-haiku.org/haikuawards/2004-henderson.htm
Also a nod / allusion to Buson perhaps:
The piercing chill I feel:
my dead wife's comb, in our bedroom,
under my heel . . .
Yosa Buson (d. 1783)
Translated by Harold G. Henderson
身にしむや亡妻の櫛を閨に踏
mi ni shimu ya naki tsuma ni kushi o neya ni fumu
与謝蕪村 (-Taniguchi Buson)
His real last name was Taniguchi.
Buson's jisei 辞世 his death poem:
白梅に明くる夜ばかりとなりにけり
shira-ume ni akuru yo bakari to nari ni keri
it is now the moment
when white plum blossoms
lighten into dawn
Tr. Crowley
after the funeral
whiskers still
in his razor
Although this is not technically a jisei (usually poems written on the poet's death bed, or shortly before, and with an awareness that death is imminent), it is a quietly devastating and masterfully restrained haikai. It also embodies ma—the emotional space between presence and absence—and evokes deep loss through a quotidian detail. The line break after “whiskers still” is especially effective: it holds just long enough to imply “stillness” or continuity of presence, before the grounding image of “in his razor” snaps us back into reality. That moment—where the beloved’s trace remains, suspended in a common object—is where grief resides most powerfully.
It’s an exemplary modern haiku. The HSA judges chose well.…