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