Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo
if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must
leave your subjective preoccupations with yourself. Otherwise you
impose yourself on the object and do not learn. Your poetry issues
of its own accord when you and the object have become one —
when you have plunged deep enough into the object to see
something like a hidden glimmering there. However well phrased
your poetry may be, if your feeling is not natural — if the object and
yourself are separate — then your poetry is not true poetry but
merely your subjective counterfeit.
_______________________
Matsuo Basho
The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches(translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa, 1966)
photo : © Tony McNicol
