Thursday Thirteen - The Haiku of Matsuo Bashō

Thanks to my friend Pack Rat, I was recently reintroduced to the works of Bashō.  Here are thirteen translations from "The Sound of Water":

This bright harvest moon
keeps me walking all night long
around the little pond

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But for a woodpecker
tapping at a post, no sound
at all in the house

-

A lovely spring night
suddenly vanished while we
viewed cherry blossoms

-

Singing, planting rice,
village songs more lovely
than famous city poems

-

Come out to view
the truth of flowers blooming
in poverty

-

Autumn approaches
and the heart begins to dream
of four-tatami rooms

-

On Budha's birthday
a spotted fawn is born -
just like that

-

Winter showers,
even the monkey searches
for a raincoat

-

The morning glories
bloom, securing the gate
in the old fence

-

That great blue oak
indifferent to all blossoms
appears more noble

-

With plum blossoms scent,
this sudden sun emerges
along a mountain trail

-

Clouds of cherry blossoms!
Is that temple bell in Ueno
or Asakusa?

-

Ungraciously, under
a great soldier's empty helmet,
a cricket sings