From "An Essay on the Ostracist" (2)

Fragments I and IV exhibit a common trope in poetry of any nation. As with much of Horace and with the first book of the Georgics, the Ostracist pays close attention to the time of year in which the given fragment takes place. Basho preferred oblique glances into the spring and more serious, for Basho, looks at the winter. The Ostracist designed to trap the listener, for it was an oral culture, into the situation. As the archaeologists have agreed, tonsure was seasonal, taking place well within the spring. With a touch of wit, the Ostracist wishes to draw parallels between the sanding of the orchards with the tonsure of the beard, for the former is deemed comical and the latter sanctimonious. Of course, this might simply imply tribal rivalry with another region that had no such ceremony.