The old pond--
a frog jumps in,
    sound of water


old pond--
and, abruptly, the sound
of a frog's splash-in

My version also secondarily emphasizes the entrance of the frog into the pond, which the Hass version does not, and the entrance of the new and living into the old and inanimate is almost as importantly what the poem is about as the contrast of the transient with the lasting.

The focus of my version's single event--a splash as opposed to a jump that is followed by a splash--seems to me to facilitate the poem's third important under-meaning: the contrast of the "old" pond with the unmentioned much older geology of our planet . . . itself a flicker in the deep eternity that the universe is (or originated from if we are the believe the big-bang physicists). In other words, I'm claiming that Hass's version, just 11 syllables long--is cluttered!

As I write all this, I am aware how effete such concern with the minute manipulation of tiny words in one tiny poem would strike many, perhaps the majority of humankind. Ditto when I'm taxonomizing. I feel self-conscious about it. At the same time, I continue to believe that the need to make (and/or feel) such kinds of minute distinctions is the hallmark of the highest intelligence. So much so that I could say more about this poem--for instance, about the effectiveness, in my opinion, of "abruptly," with commas on both sides of it, for giving my version a bit of a useful hitch, but--well, I suppose it's possible to go too far even with making distinctions.

COMMENTS

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