Cold Night: the Wild Duck

Cold Night: the Wild Duck - context Summary

Composed During Basho's Final Journey

This haiku, written in 1694 and included in Zoku Sarumino, was composed during Basho's final journey. A spare winter image—a wild duck collapsing from the sky and briefly sleeping—is presented without explanation. Readers often read that sudden physical failure as mirroring Basho's own exhaustion and failing health, so the poem functions as a compressed meditation on fragility, transience, and approaching mortality.