Authentic haiku needn't have seventeen morae in total, either. See, e.g., Bashō's crow haiku, arguably one of the genre-defining poems [0]. Plus, English is

Authentic haiku needn't have seventeen morae in total, either. See, e.g., Bashō's crow haiku, arguably one of the genre-defining poems [0]. Plus, English is on average terser than Japanese; I've read somewhere that, in English, 3-5-3 syllables pack roughly the same amount of content as the Japanese 5-7-5. [0]: https://matsuobashohaiku.home.blog/2020/11/21/upon-a-withered-branch/ https://matsuobashohaiku.home.blog/2020/11/21/upon-a-withere...