The Sound of Water

I meant to get Basho's The Narrow Road to the Far North out from the library, but it was a very large square library-bound book that upon opening emitted that unpleasant smell of a book that is old enough to change scent while sitting unread on the library shelf but not quite old enough for that scent to be a good one. Also, the book included colour photographs from the 1970s which are the sort that seem to physically assault the sensitive aesthetic sensibilities of those of us who have grown up with the advantage of the hugely improved production values of the present age.

This book was close by, so I borrowed it instead. It is tiny and brief and allowed me to carry home a bunch of other books that I may or may not read (including a long study of the Japanese haiku for which I don't think I have the patience).

The haiku were lovely and the introduction was illuminating. Some of my favourites of Basho's:

“With a warbler for / a soul, it sleeps peacefully, / this mountain willow”

“A weathered skeleton / in windy fields of memory, / piercing like a knife”

“Through frozen rice fields, / moving slowly on horseback, / my shadow creeps by”

(That place between three and four stars is a place of torture.)