鐘消えて花の香は撞く夕べ哉 kane kiete hana no ka wa tsuku yūbe kana Bashō - As the temple bell fades, The ringing lingers in the blossom scent, Evening

鐘消えて花の香は撞く夕べ哉 (kane kiete hana no ka wa tsuku yūbe kana): the bell dies away, and the scent of the blossoms strikes; evening. 鐘消えて is the bell fading; 花の香は撞く is the scent of the blossoms strikes, and 撞く is the verb for striking a temple bell, here done by the scent; 夕べ哉 is the evening, with the cutting word. The verbs have changed places, and that exchange is the poem. The first critic to read it in print, Naitō Meisetsu in 1904, confessed he could not fully understand it; Akutagawa in 1927 explained why: it is the inversion of Chinese verse, verbs exchanged as Du Fu exchanged nouns, learned from the Chinese poets Bashō had adapted in his twenties. The record's footing is thinner than for his other verses, with no Edo print in the archive and its earliest named source a compilation of 1827, and every edition since 1903 gives it to Bashō. The English is Timothy L. Jackowski's, made for Takase Studios.