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| | [minstrels] Untitled -- Matsuo Basho |
 | | Hiraizumi was the setting in which, centuries earlier, one of the great heroic tragedies of Japanese history had its bitter end. |
 | | Basho is believed to have chosen the Japanese word 'natsukusa', in reference to the muggy, slimy, rank muck that summer's oppressive humidity and heat turn the grasses of spring into, an appropriate vision, perhaps, of the chaos and treachery of war. |
 | | By the time Basho visited Hiraizumi centuries later, those dank overgrown weeds were all that remained of the fortress in which Yoshitsune made his final stand. |
| www.cs.rice.edu /~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1259.html (1320 words) |
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