17 Basho cut-ups
I
The sound of a waterfall
is heard
in the mountains.
II
On a foggy day,
I look at the face of a man
who is rich.
III
The road is itchy,
and the grass
is stained.
IV
A day when sparrows
can’t stop singing.
V
The flowers are beautiful
and the field is full
of sparrows.
VI
Red tears
and dyeing
and rock azalea
VII
A beautiful spring morning,
the mountain
is covered with beautiful flowers.
VIII
The day
I stop
at the mountain
IX
Is it raining in the fields?
The moon is shining
on the bridge over Go-nose.
X
The wind is blowing
and the dog
is drooping.
XI
The spring
is coming
soon.
XII
The low tide mud is blue
and the willows
are swaying.
XIII
If you go
to one island,
it will disappear.
XIV
A branch
of a plum
tree.
XV
The sound of flying water,
the frog in the pond,
the ancient.
XVI
First,
cut the mulberry tree
into four pieces.
XVII
A rainy moon,
a crane
with long legs.
Slasho is a pseudonym for one or more – but not fewer – contributors to the Voidspace. Emerging in response to Voidspace’s ‘Cut-up’ pop-up, Slasho is dedicated to producing cut-ups of haiku by the master, Basho. As Slasho is not fluent in Japanese, his art consists of breaking up the Japanese characters of Basho’s haiku (sourced from https://www.haiku-hia.com/about_haiku/basho300_en/archives/300-01_en.html), reconstituting them with the help of Language is a Virus’ cutup machine (https://www.languageisavirus.com/cutupmachine.php), and then converting the minced versions to English with the help of a free online translation tool. Beyond the automated function of the translation tool, little editing has been undertaken except to apply line breaks and strip punctuation. However, in some instances a secondary translation option provided by the tool has been selected rather than the first one given. Additionally, where the cut-up has provided an untranslatable string of Japanese characters, further cut-ups have been pursued until something intelligible emerged. Choices such as line-breaks have been applied largely whimsically, while anachronistic artefacts such as the Olympic rings have been retained. Some of the cut-ups stray very little distance from the original, while others are wildly different and seem to share little readily identifiable with their source. The cut-ups appear in the same order as they appear in the source linked above, and readers are invited to make comparisons between the two.