Buson - From far and near, Hearing the sounds of waterfalls, Young leaves

をちこちに滝の音聞く若葉哉 (ochikochi ni taki no oto kiku wakaba kana): here and there the sound of waterfalls, heard: the young leaves. をちこち is 遠近, far and near; 滝の音聞く is hearing the sound of waterfalls, more than one by the をちこち; 若葉 is the fresh green of early summer, the season word; 哉 closes on the leaves. The verse is in Buson's own 新花摘 of 1777, where Shiki, copying the poets in 1889, took it with its source. It is a verse of hearing: the waterfalls are placed by their sounds in a landscape the eye does not need, and the young leaves are the only thing seen. Obata Jūichi, a physicist writing on sound in 1934, made Buson the poet of the ear and set this beside two other verses of pure natural sound, the art in the two sounds set against each other; Ebara counted it among more than ten Buson verses on young leaves, his summer at its most positive. The English is Timothy L. Jackowski's, made for Takase Studios.