BASHÕ Poem by Cees Nooteboom

1
Old man among the reeds mistrust of the poet.
He is on his way to the North he is making a book with his eyes.
He is writing himself upon the water he has lost his master.
Love only in things cut out of clouds and winds.
This his calling to visit his friends take leave.
Under fluttering breezes to gather skulls and lips.
Always the eye's kiss translated into the words' drive.
Seventeen the sacred number in which coming-forth is ordained.
To digest the past frozen stony as a butterfly.
Polished fossils in a marble tide.
Here passed by the poet on his journey to the North.
Here passed by the poet finally forever.

2
We know poetic poetry the common dangers
of moonstruckness, bel canto. Embalsamed air, that is all,
unless you turn it into pebbles that flash and hurt.
You, old master, polish the pebbles
that you fling to bring down a thrush.
Out of the world you cut an image that bears your name.
Seventeen pebbles for arrows a school of deathly singers.
See by the waterside the track of the poet
on his way to the innermost snowland. See how the water erases it
how the man with the hat inscribes it again
preserves water and footprint, capturing the movement that has passed,
so that what vanished is still there as something that vanished.

3
Nowhere in this universe have I a fixed dwelling
he wrote on his cypress hat. Death took off his hat,
as should be. The sense has remained.
Only in his poems could he dwell.
Just a little while and you will see the cherry blossoms of Yoshino.
Leave your sandals under the tree, lay your brushes aside.
Wrap your stick in your hat, build up the water in lines.
The light is yours, night too.
A while longer the cypress hat and you too will see them,
the snows of Yoshino, the ice cap of Sado,
the island that takes ship to Soren over gravestone waves.

4
The poet is a milling through him the landscape is turned into words.
Yet he thinks just like you and his eyes see the same.
The sun coming to grief in the mouth of the horse.
The outermost temple of Ise the beach of Narumi.
He travels under the sail of grief he steers toward his mission.
His jaws grind flowers into verses foot by foot.
The bookkeeping of the universe as the universe daily presents itself.
In the North he knows himself for a heap of old clothes.
If he is where he will never again be you read his poems:
he peeled cucumbers and mad-apples he paints his life
I too was tempted by the wind that blows the clouds.