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Why so scrawny, cat? Starving for fat fish or mice… Or backyard love?

Matsuo Basho

I felt quite at home, / As if it were mine sleeping lazily / In this house of fresh air.
MATSUO BASHO

Air Home Quite Sleep
Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and you do not learn.
MATSUO BASHO

Knowledge Learning Leaving Nature Wisdom Yourself
This autumn- why am I growing old? bird disappearing among clouds.
MATSUO BASHO

Autumn Disappear Growth Myself Old
The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, “I shall be unhappy without loneliness,” shows that he made loneliness his master.
MATSUO BASHO

Beginning Lonely Master Myself Poem
Old pond, leap-splash – a frog.
MATSUO BASHO

Frog Old
Not to think of yourself / as someone who did not count — / Festival of the Souls.
MATSUO BASHO

Count Festival Soul Thinking
All my friends / viewing the moon – / an ugly bunch.
MATSUO BASHO

Friendship Moon Ugly View
Calm and serene The sound of a cicada Penetrates the rock.
MATSUO BASHO

Calm Rock Serene Sound
An autumn night – don’t think your life didn’t matter.
MATSUO BASHO

Autumn Life Night Thinking Yourself
Farewell, my old fan. / Having scribbled on it, / What could I do but tear it / At the end of summer?
MATSUO BASHO

End Fan Myself Old Summer
The universe and its beings are a complementarity of empty infinity, intimate interrelationships, and total uniqueness of each and every being.
MATSUO BASHO

Empty Intimate Relationship Unique Universe
Come, butterfly It’s late- We’ve miles to go together.
MATSUO BASHO

Animal Butterfly Togetherness
Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water.
MATSUO BASHO

Carry Enlightenment Water Wood
A thicket of summer grass / Is all that remains / Of the dreams of ancient warriors.
MATSUO BASHO

Dreams Summer Warrior
The oak tree: not interested in cherry blossoms.
MATSUO BASHO

Flower Interest Tree
There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon.
MATSUO BASHO

Flower Moon Nature See Thinking Yourself
When composing a verse let there not be a hair’s breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.
MATSUO BASHO

Breathe Compose Dangerous Enemy Fall Hairs Mindset Tree Writing
The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.
MATSUO BASHO

Goodness Hide Mystery Poem Reveal
Sadly, I part from you; Like a clam torn from its shell, I go, and autumn too.
MATSUO BASHO

Autumn Break Up End Leaving Myself Relationship Yourself
A flute with no holes is not a flute.
MATSUO BASHO

Deep Instrument One Liner
Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die.
MATSUO BASHO

Cry Death Flower
Winter solitude- in a world of one colour the sound of the wind.
MATSUO BASHO

Oneself Solitude Sound Wind Winter
The moon is brighter since the barn burned.
MATSUO BASHO

Bright Burn Moon One Liner
How I long to see among dawn flowers, the face of God.
MATSUO BASHO

Face Flower God Myself See
Come, see the true flowers of this pained world.
MATSUO BASHO

Flower Pain See True World
Do not resemble me-Never be like a musk melon Cut in two identical halves.
MATSUO BASHO

Be Yourself Identity Imitation Myself Original
The desire to break the silence with constant human noise is, I believe, precisely an avoidance of the sacred terror of that divine encounter.
MATSUO BASHO

Avoid Believe Break Desire Divine Human Myself Noise Silence Sound

Why so scrawny, cat? Starving for fat fish or mice… Or backyard love?

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Why so scrawny, cat? Starving for fat fish or mice… Or backyard love?

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