Haiku

Haiku (俳句 haikai verse^?)  listen (help·info) (no separate plural form) is a very short form of Japanese poetry.

Traditional haiku consist of 17 on, in three phrases of five, seven and five on respectively.
Traditional haiku masters were not always constrained by the 5-7-5 pattern.
Among contemporary poems teikei (定型 fixed form) haiku continue to use the 5-7-5 pattern while jiyuritsu (自由律 free form) haiku do not.^[9]

In Japanese, haiku are traditionally printed in a single vertical line while haiku in English often appear in three lines to parallel the three phrases of Japanese haiku.^[8]
 
Previously called hokku, haiku was given its current name by the Japanese writer Masaoka Shiki at the end of the 19th century.

The best-known Japanese haiku^[18] is Bashō's "old pond":

古池や蛙飛込む水の音

ふるいけやかわずとびこむみずのおと (transliterated into 17 hiragana)

furuike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto (transliterated into romaji)

This separates into on as:

fu-ru-i-ke ya (5)

ka-wa-zu to-bi-ko-mu (7)

mi-zu no o-to (5)

Translated:^[19]

old pond . . .

a frog leaps in

water’s sound