Member Poem

Note: Sogi (1421-1502 AD) was a Japanese poet and Basho is reflecting on his philosophy here. This is a closely related poem by Sogi, which inspired Basho’s:

Yo ni furu mo

Sara ni shigure no

Yadori kana

To grow old in the world

Is like taking shelter

In a winter storm

* In the translation, I reversed the second and third lines; Japanese grammar orders sentences in the opposite way to English.

This, in turn, was influenced by another poet, Sanaki (1141-1217 AD), who wrote this tanka:

Yo ni furu wa

Kurushiki mono wo

Maki no ya ni

Yasuku mo suguru

hatsu shigure kana

To grow old in the world

Is a difficult thing,

But taking a cedar’s shelter

Is such an easy thing

When the cold winter rain begins

Maki = Japanese cedar and is used for building houses