Basho

By Basho
Translated by Sam Hamill

Summer grasses:
all that remains of great soldiers'
imperial dreams.

From "The Essential Basho" Shambala: 1999

Today I was on Route 104 returning home and the bus went by the bus stop for the National Cemetery and in the covered bus stop was a woman with a baby in her lap. The woman's face at first was very impassive as she sat there alone and then her face collapsed into tears and she hugged her ten month child.

I thought about the poem above written by Basho so many years ago and wondered if the young woman was one of the ones whose husband had been buried in the National Cemetery recently because of the sinking of the ship a few months ago by North Korea.

That baby will never know his father and the young woman will raise him without his father because some one ordered a topedo to plow into a ship carrying him. All men must serve in the military when reaching the age of 18 years in Korea. It is the law and they all do it. The sailors on that ship had no choice but to serve their country.

I just wish those responsible would have seen the face on that woman as I did this afternoon. It was heartbreaking.