Wedding Haiku: 25 Short Poems for a Reading, Vows or Toast
Wedding haiku: 25 short poems by Bashō, Issa, Shiki and Sōseki, from the night before to the first night, for a ceremony reading, the vows, a card or a toast.
Your name is in the ceremony program, somewhere between the processional and the exchange of rings, with a note right beside it: "reading, 2 min." They told you "whatever you like, just not too long," and ever since, everything you find is either too long for two minutes or too sweet for your voice.
A wedding haiku fits exactly into that space: three lines, seventeen syllables, and a whole room going quiet long enough to hear them. Wanting something short doesn't mean you have little to say. In front of a hundred people, a voice close to breaking holds steady for three lines, not three pages.
The twenty-five below are arranged by moment, from the night before to the first night: Japanese masters, a few modern voices, four written by us, each followed by an echo that whispers what the poem only lets you hear. They're about two lives being tied together; longing and waiting have their own collection of love haiku.
The night before
First movement
The last night before
Tomorrow, two homes become one. Tonight there's packing, remembering, and not much sleep.
These aren't for reading out loud: slip one into a suitcase, under the garment bag with the suit or the dress, or send it around 10 p.m., once the seating chart is finally settled.
the time has come
to take a bride,
plum blossoms
娶貰ふ時分となるや梅の花
Nobody can say when the moment has come, but everyone knows it by the scent.
so many things
come back to mind,
these cherry blossoms
さまざまの事思ひ出す桜かな
The night before, memory packs its own suitcase.
the June rains,
facing the great river,
two houses
さみだれや大河を前に家二軒
Two families, two houses, and already the same river in front of them.
butterfly,
what are you dreaming of
to move your wings like that
蝶々や何を夢見て羽づかひ
The night before a wedding, nobody really sleeps, not even the ones who are asleep.
on the night before,
the new shoes for tomorrow
in their white tissue
Tomorrow they'll hurt, tonight they're perfect.
The wedding morning
Second movement
The day breaks for real
The coffee nobody remembers to drink, the buttons down the back, the light coming in too early.
In the morning, a haiku goes on the mirror, or into the inside pocket of the jacket, where a hand will find it around noon. The groom has his morning too, often lonelier than people think: that's the whole point of a wedding countdown gift for the groom, one small gesture a day until this one.
scent of plum blossoms,
the sun pops up, just like that,
on the mountain path
梅が香にのつと日の出る山路かな
The big day doesn't rise gently, it's suddenly there.
red dragonflies,
on Mount Tsukuba
not a single cloud
赤蜻蛉筑波に雲もなかりけり
Some mornings, you'd swear the sky was in on the secret.
Birds singing
in the dark
Rainy dawn
Rain on your wedding day is good luck, they say, and the birds sing through it anyway.
the fifty-year-old groom
hides his bald head
behind a fan
五十聟天窓をかくす扇かな
Eleven years after his plum blossoms, Issa finally marries, and blushes like he's twenty.
on a June morning,
his father redoes the knot
of his gray necktie
He's tied it himself for fifteen years, and this morning he let his father do it.
The ceremony
Third movement
Two lives, and between them
The moment a whole room holds its breath at once.
For a reading during the ceremony
A haiku for a wedding isn't read like any other text. Introduce the poet in one sentence ("a poem by Bashō, written more than three centuries ago"), read slowly, with a real silence at the end of each line, then read it a second time: the first time, the room hears words, and the second time, it sees the picture.
coolness,
the voice of the bell
leaving the bell
涼しさや鐘をはなるゝかねの声
Once it's spoken, an "I do" no longer quite belongs to the one who said it.
the strings fall silent,
the music knew
what I feel
This is the exact moment when words take over from the violin.
Bashō wrote this one when he met a friend from his hometown again, twenty years later. It holds up in front of any couple at the altar without a single word changed.
two lives,
and between them, alive,
the cherry blossoms
命二つの中に生きたる桜かな
Between two lives, a third thing always grows, and that's what everyone is here to celebrate today.
For opening the vows
The vows are theirs to say. But if one of them admits to you that they're stuck, tell them a haiku can open their wedding vows: three lines read aloud, then the rest in their own words, which the three circles method for writing wedding vows will help them find.
two plum trees,
I love that one blooms early
and the other late
二もとの梅に遅速を愛す哉
Nobody marries someone who keeps exactly their pace, and that's precisely what they promise to love.
first of all,
there is a tree to lean on,
summer grove
先づ頼む椎の木も有り夏木立
To promise, really, is to become the tree the other can lean back against.
beside the license,
two pens, and only one writes,
they both sign with it
The first thing they ever owned together belonged to the officiant.
The card and the toast
Fourth movement
What the friend writes
Three lines on the back of a card, or at the very end of a toast, when the room least expects it.
In June 1896, the writer Natsume Sōseki got married in Kumamoto. He announced it in a letter to his close friend, the poet Masaoka Shiki, with this haiku:
into summer clothes,
and from the capital
I have taken a bride
衣更へて京より嫁を貰ひけり
Sōseki announces his marriage as if noting the weather, and that's his way of being moved.
That same summer, Shiki answered with a haiku of his own, borrowing a word from a Chinese wedding song more than two thousand years old: the peach tree and its lush leaves.
thick and lush,
the young leaves of the peach tree,
you take a wife
蓁々たる桃の若葉や君娶る
Not a word about happiness, just a tree covered in new leaves, and everything is said.
That's exactly your place: the friend who writes three lines for a wedding. In the card, a haiku for the couple stands on its own, without "wishing you a lifetime of happiness" around it, just the poem and your name.
In a toast, save it for the end. After the stories and the laughter, three slow lines bring the room to a hush, and the glasses rise on their own. Standing up for them sometimes starts weeks earlier, too, with a wedding countdown gift from the maid of honor, one surprise a day.
spring rain,
together, the voice
of the twin pines
To wish them a love that lasts, Issa doesn't say "forever," he lets two pines growing old together sing.
three thousand haiku
read through,
two persimmons
三千の俳句を閲し柿二つ
Three thousand poems read for one toast, and in the end, all that matters is sitting at the head table, the two of them.
The first night
Fifth movement
At last, just the two of them
The last guests leave, the music stops, and something begins without making a sound.
These are only read by two. Leave an envelope at the hotel front desk, or slip it into the overnight bag for the wedding night, with "open tonight" written on the back.
we've come to stay the night,
my wife from this day on,
spring evening
けふよりの妻と来て泊つる宵の春
"From this day on": four words you only get to use once in a lifetime.
mustard flowers,
the moon in the east,
the sun in the west
菜の花や月は東に日は西に
There's one evening when day and night fit in the same sky, and this is it.
harvest moon,
walking around the pond
all night long
名月や池をめぐりて夜もすがら
There are always newlyweds who turn up at four in the morning, shoes in hand, at the far end of the garden.
how beautiful,
through the hole in the shoji,
the Milky Way
うつくしや障子の穴の天の川
After an enormous day, beauty comes back in through a hole the size of a fingertip.
long after midnight,
side by side on the nightstand,
two gold wedding bands
What begins doesn't make a sound.
How to write a wedding haiku
A haiku about marriage in general moves nobody, but a haiku about their marriage does. Yours doesn't need to be perfect, only to be theirs:
- Five, seven, five, counted by ear. Five syllables, then seven, then five, the way you'd say them out loud. One too many won't break the poem: Japanese counts sounds, not syllables as we count them, and the translations in this collection don't land on the count either.
- An image, not a feeling. Not "love," not "happiness," but a detail that belongs only to them: the bench from their first date, the dog that sleeps between them, the old Corolla that carried them through every move.
- The season of their wedding. In Japanese, a single word is enough to set a poem's season. Honeysuckle in June, an August thunderstorm, apple picking in October: take the one that matches their date.
- No rhyme. Rhyme pulls a poem toward a nursery rhyme, while a haiku holds by its image, and by the small silence between two lines.
For a couple whose first date was on a park bench one June evening, and who are getting married in that same season:
honeysuckle scent,
the park bench from their first date
still saves them a seat
Five, seven, five, one image (the bench), one season (honeysuckle blooms in June), no rhyme, and a poem nobody else could ever receive. At the ceremony, introduce it in one sentence ("I wrote three lines for them"), and in the card, write it on its own, by hand, and sign underneath.
Twenty-five haiku also make twenty-five mornings. Tuck one behind each day of a wedding countdown calendar, and the last one opens on the morning itself, before the dress and the tux.
One haiku a morning, until the wedding
From Bashō, from Issa, or from your own hand, three lines behind each day, opened one by one until the I do. A gift from the friend standing beside them, or from one of them to the other.
Create a calendar