Another reminder of death’s omnipresence appeared soon after, when Bashō saw a small child, perhaps two years old, abandoned by the road. The early 1680s were years of famine, flood, fire, social turmoil, and desperate poverty, and the sight was not uncommon. Still, for a modern reader, this incident is the most difficult to accept of any in Bashō’s life: he tossed some food to the child and rode on,
