Three Poems of Spring—Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694)

As I said last summer, I think many of us know the drill with Bashō at this point, don’t we, readers?

No particular source for this selection, although the Japanese orthography is that used by Yamanashi Prefectural University.

❦

春立つや新年古き米五升

haru tatsu ya shinnen furuki kome goshō

New year, old rice. Just enough is left.

春立つや haru tatsu ya declares the beginning of spring, i.e., in pre-Meiji Restoration Japan, of the year. 米五升 kome goshō for five shō (a unit of volume) of rice also proverbially is “just the right amount” of something.

❦

山は猫ねぶりて行くや雪の隙

yama wa neko neburiteiku ya yuki no hima

The cat from Cat Mountain has space, now, to lick out the snow.

隙 “gap” or “crevice” as hima is an old reading; it could also be geki or suki and the meter would hold good. The hima reading, though, is a homophone of a still-current word for free time or unhurriedness, which allowed me to play with “having space” here; the peak Nekomagadake’s eponymous cat monster has room both spatial and temporal to clean up after a hard winter.

❦

八九間空で雨降る柳かな

hakkuken sora de ame-furu yanagi kana

The willow branches spilling all that rain must be—about fifty feet up in the sky?

八九間 hakkuken is “eight or nine ken,” an old unit of length.