I’ve tried, I’ve tried again,
Bashō no yōna, New year, 2024
I suppose,
I’ll try again
On Sisyphus, the Greek who would roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down again; on Albert Einstein, who defined insanity as doing something over and over again expecting a different result; on writing the perfect haiku. Matuso Basho composed tens of thousands of haiku in his lifetime, a thousand or so were recorded.
His most famous haiku, the one that made him famous, is about a frog, a pond, and the sound of water.
古池や蛙飛こむ水のをと
Furuike ya | an old pond
Matsuo Basho, 1686
kawazu tobikomu | a frog, any frog, big or small
mizu no oto | sound of water
Funny that, it has been translated in so many ways and languages.
une petite grenouille, un vieil étang, qu’est-ce que c’est, que j’entends l’eau parle
ein Frosch, ein alter Teich, das Wasser spricht
una rana un viejo parca et el agua habla
Basho in other voices
matsuo-basho-haiku 