The sound of water,
the whisper of water trickling
over the conical hat of Matsuo Basho,
over the glossy plantain leaves
under the moon.
He falls asleep. Even the incessant
blue pheasant wingbeats
cannot wake him up,
nor the lovestruck choir
of the frogs in the pond
"Furuike ya
Kawazu tobikomu
Mizu no oto"
While kipping under the stars
He caresses in dream the purple eggplant
-first of the season-
a present from a Shinto temple's priest
to honour his most beautiful haiku...
While he sleeps al fresco his words
turn into golden fireflies
outshining the Mount Fuji.
The sound of water,
the buzz of a lovelorn wasp
embracing a triple-peony
foreboding the springtime.
White peonies of gilded edges,
sometimes pink like the kimono
of some geisha onto his aching back
his virile member, numb.
The whisper of the water
over the green-porcelain leaves,
over the massive straw hat...
He's dead asleep like a log.
Even the high-pitched call
from a crane hatching in the willows
cannot wake him up,
nor the nigh sob of a maiden
turned into amber of millenary pines
for being deflowered by a Yizo in the road.
The poet glimpses himself in reveries
as a samurai lost in the mist,
in the nude, with his sword erected,
gleaming at sunrise.
"Mizu no oto"
The sound of water
so smooth
like the hands of a youth
rubbing his painful feet
at sunset.
"And in the last minute of the journey
he clearly glimpsed his soul
in the shape of a deer running away
into an emerald woods,
the eternal silence of Buddha"
