Sponge Gourd Has Poem by Masaoka Shiki

The sponge gourd has flowered! Look at the Buddha Choked with phlegm. [by Masaoka Shiki - in the translation by Donald Keene] - ''Sap from the sponge-gourd (hechima) was used as a medicine to stop coughs or break up phlegm, but his family had been too busy ministering to the other symptoms of Shiki’s final illness to remember to collect the sap on the night of the fifteenth, as prescribed. Now the vine is a flower. Shiki, sensing that nothing can cure him or even alleviate his pain, sees himself objectively (and, even with a touch of haikai humor) as a Buddha-to-be choking on his phlegm.'' [Donald Keene] -

this is a so called ''Deathbed Haiku'' On the morning of September, with the assistance of Hekigoto, one of his successor who was nursing him and his sister Ritsu, he wrote down three final haiku. This is one of them.

Sponge gourd vine juice was used to relieve coughing, but it could no longer help Shiki. Even sponge gourd, which is not so elegant, became the theme of his haiku. He found the poetic taste in it and took himself for a hotoke buddha (a departed soul) . Death came at one o'clock the following morning.

a new season comes.. lifes go on.. but his illness is taking him to death..

Masaoka your poem is brilliant in its shortness, if only you had lengthened it a bit more