There`s no indecency in those lines. Things being made by a horse are just a metaphor
of rain and ... shower. A lyrical hero of the poem needs a shower badly. There might be
available many other associative meanings. All meanings at once. While you are
scrutinizing the poem like a picture, since characters in a Japanese poem are some kind
of pictures too, the numerous senses and meanings are blowing up as if it were photos.
There exists hissing alliteration of s-s-s-s-s-s-s in Japanese original and both translations.
It"s a laconic roomy Japanese verse.
People throughout the world often imitate the style of Japanese hokku and tankas, but
they rarely reach the real success, because, this, by the way, concerns the very modern
Japanese persons, they do not comprehend the basic aesthetic principle of that genre.
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There, in the outer space the astronauts met a tiny spacecraft, its outer dimensions
did not correspond to its behaviour, too independent one for the boundless Universe.
Yet after stepping aboard and being inside of it there was revealed that it had been
roomier than Big Apple or L.A. or London or Moscow... all combined. That spacecraft was
based on the principle of the hokku-tanka. Basho knew that principle and stuck to it.
If you ever do, you`ll be bashos too.
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