I came to love Basho, the seventeenth century Japanese poet, several years ago when I was teaching fourth graders.  I loved sharing his tiny Haiku appreciations of nature, and the children responded enthusiastically.

     I also found Basho an appealing person.  Although he achieved fame and success early on as a great poet, he did not take to the culture of the literary salon.  What he really loved was to walk about the countryside, enjoying nature and expressing his appreciation in verse.–April Moore

     Here are a few of Basho’s more wintry poems, translated:

The sea darkens                                                                                                                                                   
And a wild duck’s call
Is faintly white

The sound of hail–
I am the same as before
like that aging oak

Against the brushwood gate
Dead tea leaves swirl
In the stormy wind

Will you start a fire?
I’ll show you something nice–
A huge snowball

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 8:06 am and is filed under Celebrating our beautiful Earth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.