Tag: haikai
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A November with Basho, Day 22
Along the road to Yamanaka Hot Springs, Mount Shirane rose behind our backs. At the foot of a mountain to our left we found a small temple to compassionate Kannon. After the retired Emperor Kazan had made a pilgrimage to the thirty-three western temples, he enshrined an image of the bodhisattva Kannon here, naming the…
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A November with Basho, Day 21
At a village called Komatsu: Aptly named Komatsu Child Pine, a breeze blows over pampas and clover Here we visited Tada Shrine to see Sanemori’s helmet and a piece of his brocade armor-cloth presented to him by Lord Yoshitomo when he served the Genji clan. His helmet was no common soldier’s gear: engraved with chrysanthemums…
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A November with Basho, Day 20
We crossed Mount Unohana and Kurikara Valley at noon on the fifteenth day of the seventh moon and entered Kanazawa, there we took rooms at an inn with a merchant from Osaka, a Mr. Kansho, who was in town to attend memorial services for the haiku poet Issho, locally renowned for his verse and devotion…
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A November with Basho, Day 19
After several days, clouds gathering over the North Road, we left Sakata reluctantly, aching at the thought of a hundred thirty miles to the provincial capital of Kaga. We crossed the Nezu Barrier into Echigo Province, and from there went on to Ichiburi Barrier in Etchu, restating our resolve all along the way. Through nine…
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A November with Basho, Day 18
Sitting in the temple chamber with the blinds raised, we saw the whole lagoon, Mount Chokai holding up the heavens inverted on the water. To the west the road leads to the Muyamuya Baarrier; to the east it cuarves along a bank toward Akita; to the north, the sea comes in on tide flats at…
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A November with Basho, Day 17
After all the breathtaking views of rivers and mountains, lands and seas, after everything we’d seen, thoughts of seeing Kisakata’s famous bay still made my heart begin to race. Twenty miles north of Sakata Harbor, as we walked the sandy shore beneath mountains where sea winds wander, a storm came up at dusk and covered…
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A November with Basho, Day 16
After leaving Haguro, we came to the castle town of Tsuru-ga-oka…and were greated by the samurai Nagayama Shigeyuki. We composed a round of haiku, bid farewell, and started by boat down the Mogami, bound for Sakata Harbor… From Hot Sea Mountain southward to Windy Beach the evening cools Basho, “The Narrow Road to the Interior,”…
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A November with Basho, Day 15
On the eigth we climbed Moon Mountain, wearing the holy paper necklaces and cotton hats of Shinto priests, following behind a mountain monk whose footsteps passed through mist and clouds and snow and ice, climbing miles higher as though drawn by invisible spirits into the gateway of the sky–sun, moon, and clouds floated by and…
Frank J. Tassone 