the grass grows thick — there they burn the dead
kusa shigeru soko wa shinin o yaku tokoro
1933–1934 · Begging journeys out from the hermitage
Sōmokutō · On the Begging Road (Gyōkotsu tojō)
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A patch where the grass grows thick. That, they say, is the place where the dead are burned. The traveler only looks at the grass, denser here than elsewhere, and passes by. Beside death, the grass lives all the more vigorously. The poem does not explain the contrast.