April 24, 2010

We waited for the weather to clear at a place called Oishida, intending to sail down the Mogami River. People told us that the seeds of the old haikai poetry had been scattered here, and people still recalled nostalgically the unforgotten, long-ago days of its glory; the rustic notes of a reed pipe brought music to their hearts. “We are groping for the right path, uncertain which to follow, the old or the new, but there is no one to guide us on our way,” they said, and I had no choice but to compose with them a scroll of poems.
                                                                                           Basho
                                                                The Narrow Road to Oku