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Basho and his Narrow Road to the Deep North

From Back Roads to Far Towns
by Cid Corman and Kamaike Susume, Grossman Publishers, 1968.

Station 36 - Komatsu

And on the road this poem:

red red
sun unrelentingly
autumn's wind.
(July 25) At a place called Komatsu:
delicately
named Komatsu blowing
hagi/susuki.

Visited Tada Shrine here. Sanemori's helmet and part of his nishiki there.

In days of old, presented to him, as a member of the Genji, by his commander Yoshitomo, it is said. Clearly not designed for a common soldier. From eye-cover to ear-flap engraved with chrysanthemums interlaced by ivy scrollwork, a dragon headpiece with hoe-shaped frontlets attached. After Sanemori's death in battle, Kiso Yoshinaka with message of prayer donated it to shrine, Higuchi Jiro his emissary: can see them there even now as annals of shrine describe.

cruel!
under the helmet
cricket


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