Buson - A flash of lightning, The sound of dew, Dripping down the bamboos

稲妻にこぼるる音や竹の露 (inazuma ni koboruru oto ya take no tsuyu): at a flash of lightning, the sound of dew spilling from the bamboo. 稲妻 is lightning, the autumn season word; こぼるる音 is the sound of something spilling over, which is what dew does from a leaf; や holds the line after the sound; 竹の露 is the dew on the bamboo, shaken loose by the flash. The word is dew. Buson's own selection of 1784, printed in the last winter of his life, reads 露, and so does every later edition but two, which print the bamboo's voice instead. Lightning is the loudest thing in the sky and makes no sound here; what is heard is dew, the quietest thing in the grove, heard because the flash has made the listener still. The English is R. H. Blyth's, from his Haiku of 1952.