#mastuo basho

The sea grows dark:   a duck’s voice   faintly white      skewered whale on the grill…   and a drink For 200 years   on this mountain   I took up the axe      Acorn-sowing autumn   he swept it away Under a sinking moon   red crossbills   traverse the sky      He carries the dewdrops   of a remote province “This rain   is it the tears   of my aging mother?”       One flower blooming:   a peony at the window His Go strategy   comes to him   two days later      Back in Zhou   the cry of a fox Digging mushrooms   in a dry riverbed,   darkness approaching      Peeled pine timbers:   the shrine gateway Rain-hat laid out   he mends the rips   in his robe      Autumn birds dine   at the burial ground A typhoon on this beach   two days ago   bright moon      In mist droplets   a dragon   is drawn Blossom clouds,   the stone door   is pushed open       Heat shimmers venerate   the beauty’s form Silent butterflies   and an Ezo bridegroom   bemoaning himself       Dried sea slugs even:   tears wet his sleeve Through the trees   to the west   a temple’s white walls      A viny hut in a grove   ten-by-ten feet The lone old man   forms little by little   an earthenware pot                             Infamous in Kyoto   the curse of the bumps “Fuji’s peak!” he shouts,   in rain-hat   on horseback      One crane flies off   somewhere to sleep Awaiting nightfall   at her mirror   in light make-up      The page, hid in her robe,   pushes on the bush clover’s gate Thin moon…   a clock tolls the hour:   two in the morning      A hurried casket    in the fast-dying dew Broken armor   sent back   to his homeland      The kingdom of Koguryo:   plowing the field Chinese paper   dyed lilac   scented with blossoms      A companion for long days   at the small shrine In the spring shower   a new convert approaches   carrying rice cakes      Her travel-cloak is wisteria   with a young grass pattern

This is a renga composed by Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) and three of his pupils, detailing a boat journey and the view of the landscape they saw in Owari (now Nagoya).

Renga is a traditional collaborative form of Japanese poetry, where tanka (poems of 5-7-5-7-7) are first split in two (the opening 5-7-5 poem being the hokku which Bashō would of course make a form into it's own right) with the second stanza (in Japanese ku or specifically here tsukeku; added stanza) both reflecting on, but also moving forward from, the previous lines. Rengas can range from 12-100 links, but the most common are links of 24 or 36. I liked this layout of the poem as it reflects the way haiku/renga were normally written, as well as emphasising the collaborative nature of the poem.