Quote by Kobayashi Issa: “This world of dew is only a world of dew — and yet, and yet.”

Issa wrote this after the death of his infant daughter. He knew intellectually that Buddhist teaching calls life brief and impermanent as morning dew. But grief doesn't care about philosophy. The 'and yet, and yet' is the heart refusing to accept what the mind knows.

Issa wrote this haiku in 1819 following the death of his infant daughter Sato, one of several children he lost in early life. The poem appears in his diary-journal Oraga Haru. Late Edo Japan was a period of rigid social stratification, and Issa, born to a rural farming family, experienced both economic precarity and devastating personal loss throughout his life.

Late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Japanese haiku poet known for his deeply personal, compassionate verse and his affinity for small, overlooked creatures. He suffered significant personal tragedy throughout his life, including the loss of his mother, multiple children, and his first wife. His collection Oraga Haru (The Year of My Life) is a masterpiece of haiku prose.