worded attribution at the front of the novel, the poem is  sometimes incorrectly believed to have been written by a Japanese  poet called Matsuo Basho (See: Bashô Matsuo (qv).) It is clarified  in the novel that is should not be considered a haiku at all i.e. it  is a poor attempt at writing poetry by Bond after being taught how  to do so. The novel and its epigraph explain that the haiku is  "after Basho" i.e. written in the style of the famous 17th Century  Japanese poet.