Santōka Alarm
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45 poems of water.

みず · in 45 of the 701 poems of Sōmokutō

Spring water met on the begging road, water drawn, water carried home. His water poems discover, again and again, how good water tastes: “water this delicious overflowing”, “overtaken by nightfall — how good the water is around here”. The drink most often written about by a man who drank himself into ruin was water — the quiet heart of this ranking. Near the end came “muddy water flowing on grows clear”; water that clears as it flows may have been his own wish. “Drifting and drifting I savor the water.”

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