Under the Cherry Moon

Earl Fowler

After posting an ersatz Romantic poem in this space last Sunday about the astonishing florescence of spring on Vancouver Island, I came across Essays in Idleness, the English title for a classical work of Japanese prose from the 14th century.

Now that the cherry blossoms are beginning to fade, tear and tumble in this part of the world, Buddhist monk Kenko’s Tsuezuregusa (a collection of musings deriving from the Japanese expression for “with nothing better to do”) strikes me as particularly poignant and profound, wistful, wise and worth sharing.

The poem was written with a boost from the ChatGPT generative artificial chatbot. This meditation is purely human and all the better for it:

Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless? To long for the moon while looking on the rain, to lower the blinds and be unaware of the passing of the spring — these are even more deeply moving.

Branches about to blossom or gardens strewn with faded flowers are worthier of our admiration. Are poems written on such themes as “Going to view the cherry blossoms only to find they had scattered” or “On being prevented from visiting the blossoms” inferior to those on “Seeing the blossoms”?

People commonly regret that the cherry blossoms scatter or that the moon sinks in the sky, and this is natural; but only an exceptionally insensitive man would say, “This branch and that branch have lost their blossoms. There is nothing worth seeing now.”

In all things, it is the beginnings and ends that are interesting. Does the love between men and women refer only to moments when they are in each other’s arms? The man who grieves over a love affair broken off before it was fulfilled, who bewails empty vows, who spends long autumn nights alone, who lets his thoughts wander to distant skies, who yearns for the past in a dilapidated house — such a man truly knows what love means.

The moon that appears close to dawn after we have long waited for it moves us more profoundly than the full moon shining cloudless over a thousand leagues. And how incomparably lovely is the moon, almost greenish in its light, when seen through the tops of the cedars deep in the mountains, or when it hides for a moment behind clustering clouds during a sudden shower!

The sparkle on hickory or white-oak leaves seemingly wet with moonlight strikes one to the heart. One suddenly misses the capital, longing for a friend who could share the moment.

And are we to look at the moon and the cherry blossoms with our eyes alone? How much more evocative and pleasing it is to think about the spring without stirring from the house, to dream of the moonlight though we remain in our room!