WALKING ALONG THE RIVER FUJI, THE POET BASHO FINDS A CHILD ABANDONED BY ITS PARENTS

[Published in Symmetry Pebbles, issue #4]


WALKING ALONG THE RIVER FUJI, THE POET BASHO FINDS A CHILD ABANDONED BY ITS PARENTS


A child by the road,
crying in the autumn wind--
great Basho leaves food
and takes away an image
from which he forms a poem.

If he had taken
the child with him, would he have
mastered poetry?
Or, would he be known only
as a man who saved a child?