Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) was a Japanese haiku master famous for his poetry and his travelogues that describe his pilgrimages, using a mixture of haiku and prose (haibun style). You can read my own haibun travelogue, The Narrow Road, in the Place section. This poem describes Basho preparing to set out and the thoughts that float through his mind as he sits in Zen meditation. The thoughts are derived from incidents taken from Basho’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
Old Basho
Old Basho awakes
Rolls his thin sleeping mattress
Sits and meditates
Cross-legged on the floor
His travel gear patched and stowed
The road at the door.
Heartlands of Honshu!
Shirakawa Barrier!
The road there is you!
The narrow road within
Oku-no-hosomichi
Where all paths begin.
Into the mind’s pool
The thought frogs plop! Old Basho
Remember old fool
A boy’s loose laughter
The whisper of kimono
And what comes after.
‘The bark of the fox
Makes me afraid; walk me home.’
How the full moon mocks!
Now tears fall instead.
A ghost from the flooded town
With the wave-drowned dead.
‘Where are last year’s snows?
Where are yesterday’s deep falls?
Where are tomorrow’s?’
Ah well! so be it!
Mount Fuji in the distance
Shimmers in the mist.
Today will be fine
Pink blossomed cherry trees, Spring
Sixteen Eighty-Nine
The road there to roam.
Every day is a journey
And the journey home.