BASHO

How very noble!
One who finds no satori
in the lightning-flash

Breakfast enjoyed
in the fine company of
morning glories

Traveling this high
mountain trail, delighted
by violets

A solitary
crow on a bare branch-
autumn evening

This first fallen snow
is barely enough to bend
the jonquil leaves

Whore and monk, we sleep
under one roof together,
moon in a field of clover

At the ancient pond
a frog plunges into
the sound of water

Now I see her face,
the old woman, abandoned,
the moon her only companion

Nothing in the cry
of cicadas suggests they
are about to die

How reluctantly
the bee emerges from the deep
within the peony

The farmer's roadside
hedge provided lunch for
my tired horse

...