Like Basho, I Know The Feeling Of Being In An Empty House Poem by Dennis Ryan

April 5,2019 at 2: 14 p.m.; Thursday afternoon, May 14,2020

"It was early on the morning of March the twenty-seventh that I took to the road...My friends had got together the night before, and they all came with me on the boat to keep me company for the first few miles."
- Matsuo Basho, Oku No Hoso Michi (The Narrow Road to the Deep Interior)

Yuku haru ya
tori naki uo no
me wa namida
- Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) , haiku from Oku No Hoso Michi

Passing spring
bird cries, fish eyes
in tears
- my translation of above haiku

Like Basho, I know the feeling of being
in an empty house.Being preoccupied him.
He traveled far and near to greet ancient ghosts,
or to remember them in the places they once lived,
had fallen and travelled—the House of Fallen Persimmons
and Shiogoshi, where Saigyo had written a famous tanka.
He rested his road-weary legs in the shadeof that same willow.
Like him, I remember, greet old ghosts in old photos.