Bashō’s parting haiku is playful in which even the wildlife in the local market is moved by the sadness of separation.
行く春や鳥啼き魚の目は涙 yuku haru ya tori naki uo no me wa namida spring is passing –birds are crying and the eyes of fish are filling with tears
Matsuo Basho, May 1689
Spring is Passing
Yaku Haru, 行く春, spring is passing, や, ya is added for emphasis to express sorrow.
Bashō started walking 333 years ago today (May 16), leaving from Senju (now Kita-Senju) on a journey that would become the basis of his famous travelogue, Oku no hosomichi, Travel to the Northern Interior. After leaving his home and traveling with friends by boat up the Sumida River, it was time to say farewell to friends.
Note. Oku no Hosomichi (奥の細道), translated as The Narrow Road to the Deep North or the Northern Interior. Hosomichi is literally narrow path, what we might call the back roads in America. Oku is literally the interior, although Basho spent much of his route on both the eastern and western shores of Japan. The book was published in 1702 after Basho’s death.
Quoting Matsuo Basho in his Narrow Road to the Deep North(Oku no hosomichi, 奥の細道).
Station 2 – Departure
Early on the morning of March the twenty-seventh I took to the road. Darkness lingered in the sky. The moon was still visible, though gradually thinning away. Mount Fuji’s faint shadow and the cherry blossoms of Ueno and Yanaka bid me a last farewell. My friends had gathered the night before, coming with me on the boat to keep me company for the first few miles. When we got off the boat at Senju, however, the thought of a journey of three thousand miles suddenly seized my heart, and neither the houses of the town nor the faces of my friends could be seen except as a tearful vision in my eyes.
Spring is passing! Birds are singing, fish weeping With tearful eyes.
With this verse to commemorate my departure, I began my journey, but lingering thoughts made my steps heavy. Watching friends standing side by side, waving good-bye as long as they could see my back.
Yuku haruya
Spring is passing!Yuku haruya!
The wonderful thing about poetry in verse is that one can read and reread the same poem or the same verse. It is, in a sense a new beginning. It is a chance to start over, although it is on a familiar path, and even so, change directions. Maybe it is a journey into a better lifestyle, with daily exercise and healthier eating.
That new beginning always starts today.
Spring,in verse, in poem,
Perpetually Passing
And yet, it begins anew
Bashō no yōna
Senju
Basho began his journey in the late spring of 1689. His wanderlust lasting over five months — 156 days and nights, to be precise.
The first leg of the journey was by boat from the Fukagawa District where Basho was then living, along the Sumida River, to Senju, today’s Adachi fish market, in the northern part of Edo (Tokyo). From there it was a short walk to the Arakawa River and the bridge that lead north.
Surrounded by the fish mongers and the birds dancing around looking for scraps to eat, Basho began his journey with tearful eyes. He was not quite alone, for Kawai Sora, his neighbor in Fukagawa, would be his companion.
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