Matsuo Basho

Matsuo Bashō (1644 – 1694)

Japanese poet

• Even in Kyoto
  hearing the cuckoo's cry
  I long for Kyoto. (Translation: Robert Hass)

• Travelling, sick
  My dreams roam
  On a withered moor (Translation: Robert Hass)
  • Basho's death poem, written while he was dying of a stomach illness.

• There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; There is nothing you can think that is not the moon. (Translation: R. H. Blyth)

• Sabi is the color of the poem. It does not necessarily refer to the poem that describes a lonely scene. If a man goes to war wearing stout armor or to a party dressed up in gay clothes, and if this man happens to be an old man, there is something lonely about him. Sabi is something like that. (Translation: Robert Hass)