Bashō: Ruined castles, abandoned temples and summer grasses.

No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget it has a bearing upon our everlasting self which is poetry.
      - Basho

Matsuo Bashō (1644 –1694) haiku master, wrote of his travels through Japan’s countryside. As he wandered, he discarded most of the few possessions he carried with him.

The moon and sun are travelers through eternity. Even the years wander on. Whether drifting through life on a boat or climbing toward old age leading a horse, each day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
     - Bashō, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Bashō’s travels brought him to fields where great battles were once fought. Now, no one can remember why. The empty plains remind him of a poem by Tu Fu (712-720): 

The whole country devastated,
only mountains and rivers remain.
In springtime, at the ruined castle,
the grass is always green.

Bashō weeps over how little we’ve learned from interminable war and bloodshed. He later writes:

Summer grasses –
after great soldiers’
imperial dreams.

The grasses do not mourn. They simply grow — indifferent to empire, patient as the Tao.

(With thanks to Sam Hamill’s Basho’s Ghost).