black
grey
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Come out to view / the truth of flowers blooming / in poverty.

Matsuo Basho

A weathered skeleton in windy fields of memory, piercing like a knife.
MATSUO BASHO

Memories Skeleton
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
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
Fresh spring! / The world is only Nine days old – / These fields and mountains!
MATSUO BASHO

Age Fresh Mountain Nature Spring Time World
Go to the object. Leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Do not impose yourself on the object. Become one with the object. Plunge deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there.
MATSUO BASHO

Deep Enough Gide Leaving Object Subject Yourself
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
The oak tree: not interested in cherry blossoms.
MATSUO BASHO

Flower Interest Tree
I hope to have gathered To repay your kindness The willow leaves Scattered in the garden.
MATSUO BASHO

Garden Hope Kindness Pay
No matter where your interest lies, you will not be able to accomplish anything unless you bring your deepest devotion to it.
MATSUO BASHO

Accomplishment Deep Devotion Interest Yourself
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
Traveler’s heart. Never settled long in one place. Like a portable fire.
MATSUO BASHO

Fire Heart Place Travel
Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die.
MATSUO BASHO

Cry Death Flower
Year by year, the monkey’s mask reveals the monkey.
MATSUO BASHO

Animal Character Deep Face Reveal
First snow-falling-on the half-finished bridge.
MATSUO BASHO

Bridge Fall Snow
Around existence twine, (Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!) ropes of twisted vine.
MATSUO BASHO

Existence Plant Rope Twisted

Come out to view / the truth of flowers blooming / in poverty.

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Come out to view / the truth of flowers blooming / in poverty.

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