The beautiful and distant Japanese haiku tend to talk about nature – the beginning of a season, the woman on the path – and move the leaves of the spirit, in short lines without rhyme, on the basis of a key word. They do not have a title, and both punctuation and capital signs should not be used necessarily. They are usually sober, rested and delicate, even hard at times. Since they are very precise, it is surprisingly complex to be fully aware of what they say. They can leave you thoughtful and excited. They're the eternal ones.

To accompany the haiku, it used to be a tradition for the author himself to attach a drawing to the piece. The drawing was not usually very perfect and could even be a sketch. Most of the ones that Peru Magdalena brings to this book are classic haiku classics, jator-genuine, with drawings.

But haiku is not their appearance or metric, as what they do on Mondays at the local sports center is not yoga.

Haiku is hardly literature, but asceticism, a way of finding beauty. Like Baco, like Oteiza, like Igerabide and Sarri, Peru Magdalena manages to spiritualize what seems to be of little importance. Empty is a terrible book, Joseba Sarrionandia himself has written a “preface” without a prologue, respectfully.

When I first opened it, I thought it was easy to fall into the haiku. But I started reading and I thought it was easy, too, to judge things too quickly. Empty is a lesson on the essence of pure poetry. A lot of moments still resonate: “there is no dark darkness,” “there is no force,” “there is no way you will travel.” This is among the classics, in the part dedicated to the wind: “The tree dances in harmony.” Those who belong to the fog are not haiku in the strict sense, but reflections or short poems, but they are also read with pleasure. In the part around the mountains we can find unsurpassed purity: “There is no mountain.” And that's it.

The filmmaker Andrei Tarkovski defined the happiness of the haiku receiver, saying that the reader must be lost in the depth of the composition in a cosmos where there is neither high nor low. In the last poem the writer himself tells us how it is convenient to read the book, that is, in the same way as it has been written: “Be pure.” Be water, my friend.