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A chaikhana is a teahouse along the legendary Silk Road pilgrimage and trading route linking China to the Middle East and Europe. It is a place of rest along the journey, a place to shake off the dust of the road, to sip tea, and to gather together to sing songs of the Divine...


It is deep autumn

by Matsuo Basho
English version by R. H. Blyth

It is deep autumn
My neighbor
How does he live, I wonder.


/ Image by Anthony Ievlev /

View All Poems by Matsuo Basho


Some haiku can put us into a dream state, painting in the inner eye a whole landscape, bringing us deeply into an expansive moment in time. And Basho is one of the greatest masters of the art form. Yet, this particular haiku doesn't touch me that way. It is simple, pared down to almost nothing. There is no artistic evocation of the natural world, other than the observation that it is autumn. And then a question about his neighbor. My first reaction is to be disappointed by the haiku. And then I sit with it and I find so much more welling up within me as I let it percolate in my mind.

The mere mention of "deep autumn" infuses me with the tentative melancholy of the season. Looking outside my window on this chilly autumn morning in Oregon, I see trees with bright yellows and reds beneath a gray sky, and I know how quickly this lovely scene will pass. It makes the beauty all the more magical somehow. It's as if the life I took for granted throughout the spring and summer is leaving this world and journeying to the otherworld, and I have caught sight of its departure.

But Basho immediately wonders about his neighbor, how he lives. Why?

I imagine it is because autumn is the time when abundance shifts to meager portions. When the world is full of ripeness, we assume all are doing well. But when branches are bare the heart, when it is not shut down, asks how does my neighbor provide his next meal? How does he keep his house warm?

Perhaps this poem is an observation that autumn is a time for empathy, for compassion, as we appreciate the fragile beauty of the world.


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/ Photo by Maria Hossmar /

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