Poet
Matsuo Bashō
Japanese poet · 1644–1694
the old pond / a frog jumps inhaiku
Matsuo Bashō raised the haiku from party game to high art. A restless traveler, he walked thousands of miles across Japan, recording moments of stillness in seventeen syllables: a frog, a pond, a splash.
His travel journal The Narrow Road to the Deep North is one of the masterpieces of world literature. The haiku presented here are modern English translations prepared for this site.
3 poems by Matsuo Bashō
Full text, free to read — all in the public domain.