ANY of us know that Japanese are short and contain images. But why they are so short and what function the images are intended to perform in so small a space are questions usually beyond those who do not have some knowledge of Zen Buddhism. It has often been said that the most Japanese thing about the Japanese is Zen. More a method than a collection of doctrine, Zen by its very nature does more to a Japanese poem than Christianity does to an American or English poem. Perhaps this can be made clear by turning a lyric of W. H. Davies, presumably a Christian, into an approximate Zen statement. two poems are not equivalent, nor is one to be judged superior to the other; they are different. Davies wrote a poem called The Example: Here's an example from A Butterfly; That on a rough, hard rock Happy can lie; Friendless and all alone On this unsweetened stone.