Howard Norman on his selection:

I read two diary entries by the iconic haiku master, Masaoka Shiki, which I translated with Kazumi Tanaka while in Japan in 2007. Shiki was often confined by his lifelong illness to his bed; a recurring image is a parade of the tops of black umbrellas seen just over the top of a wall.

Masaoka Shiki: Selected Poems, trans. Burton Watson

Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0