The months and days are travelers that journey forever, and the years that come and go are travelers too. Boatmen who spend their lives on boats, and grooms who meet old age leading horses by the bridle, are traveling every day and make travel their home. Many people of old, too, died on the road.
I too, from some year or other, like a scrap of cloud drawn by the wind, could not stop longing to wander; I roamed the seashores, and last autumn I came back to my shabby hut by the Sumida River and swept away the old cobwebs to live there. Gradually the year drew to its end, and when spring came and I saw the sky veiled in haze, I wanted to cross the Shirakawa Barrier; as if possessed by the god of restlessness, my heart went wild, the gods of the road seemed to beckon, and I could put my hand to nothing.
I mended the tears in my leggings, changed the cord of my hat, and as soon as I had burned moxa on the sanri points below my knees, the moon at Matsushima was the first thing on my mind. I gave my hut to someone else, and as I moved to Sanpu's cottage, I wrote:
"Kusa no to mo / sumikawaru yo zo / hina no ie" (Even this grass hut has come to a change of dwellers: now a house of dolls. The humble hut will become a lively home where dolls are displayed for the Doll Festival.)
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On the twenty-seventh of the third month, the dawn sky was hazy, the lingering moon was pale, Mount Fuji's peak showed faintly, and I felt forlorn, wondering when I would see the cherry treetops of Ueno and Yanaka again. My close friends had all gathered the night before and came by boat to see me off. When we went ashore at a place called Senju, my heart was full at the thought of three thousand leagues ahead, and on this parting road of a fleeting world, I shed tears.
"Yuku haru ya / tori naki uo no / me wa namida" (Spring is passing: the birds cry, and in the eyes of the fish, tears.)
It was 1689, and Basho was forty-six. With his disciple Sora, he left his Basho hut in Fukagawa on a journey of about a hundred and fifty days and six hundred ri (about 2,400 kilometers).