Supongo que en una mujer, hasta el odio es una forma del amor. - Yasunari Kawabata

Here in our mountains, the snow falls even on the maple leaves.

Ikenobo Sen'o remarked on another occasion (this too is in his Sayings) that "the mountains and strands should appear in their own forms". Bringing a new spirit into his school of flower arranging, therefore, he found "flowers" in broken vessels and withered branches, and in them too the enlightenment that comes from flowers. "The ancients arranged flowers and pursued enlightenment." Here we see awakening to the heart of the Japanese spirit, under the influence of Zen. And in it too, perhaps, is the heart of a man living in the devastation of long civil wars.

Was this the bright vastness the poet Bashō saw when he wrote of the Milky Way arched over a stormy sea?