As a simple juxtaposition of images the poem is striking enough, but it also evokes a comparison of the images, each of which enriches the other. The mind is struck as with a hammer, bringing the senses up short and releasing a flood of associations. Its only shortcoming is that the scene is static; it is a painting, not a happening of the sort that can sometimes trigger the sudden sense of Zen enlightenment. Perhaps Basho realized that his art had not yet drunk deeply enough at the well of Zen, for a few years after this poem was written he became a serious Zen student and began to travel around Japan soaking up images. His travel diaries of the last years are a kind of Haiku "poetics," in which he extends the idea of _sabi_ to include the aura of loneliness that can surround common objects. Zen detachment entered his verses; all personal emotion was drained away, leaving images objective and devoid of any commentary, even implied. More important, the Zen idea of transience appeared. Not the transience of falling cherry blossoms but the fleeting instant of Zen enlightenment. Whereas the antilogic _koan _anecdotes were intended to lead up to this moment, Basho's Haiku were the moment of enlightenment itself, as in his best-known poem: _Furu-ike ya _An ancient pond _kawazu tobi-komu _A frog jumps in _mizu-no-oto _The sound of water. These deceptively simple lines capture an intersection of the timeless and the ephemeral. The poem is said to have described an actual occurrence, an evening broken by a splash. The poet immediately spoke the last two lines of the poem, the ephemeral portion, and much time was then devoted to creating the remaining static and timeless part. This was as it should be, for the inspiration of a Haiku must be genuine and suggest its own lines at the moment it occurs. Zen eschews deliberation and rational analysis; nothing must come between object and perception at the critical moment.