There is a rather well-known verse by Bashô:

Summer grasses –
All that remains
Of warrior’s dreams.

 

 

As a hokku it is a bit too “thoughty” — more reflective, like waka. But recognizing that fact, it still works as a poem, and that is not surprising given that the sentiments come from a verse on war and destruction by the Chinese poet Du Fu (Tu Fu):

The country shattered, mountains and rivers remain.
At the city, grasses and trees are deep.
Feeling the moment, my tears fall on a flower.
Regretting parting — a bird startles my mind.
The beacon fires have been lit for three months now.
Family letters are worth ten thousand coins.
I scratch my white head, its hairs become scant,
And nearly unable to hold a pin.

 

 

And of course there is Carl Sandburg’s famous poem,

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work– 
                            I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor:
                             What place is this?
                             Where are we now?

                            I am the grass.
                            Let me work.

 

 

 

The universe and its natural processes continue, with humans or without them. That is why R. H. Blyth compares this verse of Bashô to the lines of Matthew Arnold near the end of his Sohrab and Rustum, itself based on a story of battle from the old Persian Shahname, the Book of Kings:

But the majestic river floated on,
Out of the mist and hum of that low land….

 It is expressed also by Tennyson in his poem The Brook:

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

 

 

 

 

David