Syntactic Presumptions

Keith Garebian in the introduction Wild Grass Moon Moon on Wild Grasses bemoans the limit-introducing limitations of the English language:

It is difficult for English haiku to have kireji (cutting words), small but powerful linguistic units that indicate a pause or caesura. In English, the poet resorts to actual punctuation.

Word-order and phrase-order and order-in-general may provide a guide to introducing the pauses that mark haiku.

Garebian	Reworked
Endless songs of rain on eaves, sky crowned with rainbows, I go to the woods	I go to the woods sky crowned with rainbows on [l]eaves endless songs of rain
The blue heron comes quietly on dark stilt legs spearing little fish	spearing little fish quietly on dark stilt legs the blue heron comes
The blue dragonfly — a humming wire makes you see the air vibrating	the air vibrating a humming wire makes you see the blue dragonfly
The brown grizzly waits hungry-mouthed — ready to snatch the leaping salmon	the leaping salmon ready to snatch — hungry-mouthed the brown grizzly waits

We are left here, hungry-mouthed, vibrating, spearing and sometimes catching in the pauses the drip of endless rain.

And so for day 1412
25.10.2010