古池や 蛙飛込 水の音 furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto bashō 芭蕉 The old pond, a frog jumps in, the sound of water

The old pond,
a frog jumps in,
the sound of water ^[1]

古池や蛙飛込水の音 (furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto): the old pond; a frog leaps in: the sound of the water.

古池や蛙飛込水の音 is a verse of one sound. An old pond lies still. A frog goes in, and the poem ends on the water's sound. や sets the pond down on its own before anything happens in it. 蛙, kawazu, is the older word for a frog and marks the spring, and 飛込, to leap in, is written here without its kana ending. Readers have long said the same of it: the sound is the water's, the leap is the frog's, and the place is the pond.

Calligraphy Notes:

1) Note that we have used the shortened version of tobikomu, the full form is 飛び込む (read tobikomu) meaning "to jump in; to leap in; to plunge into; to dive in".

References:

^[1] After R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 1 (Hokuseido Press, 1949), p. 277.

The verse was first printed in the spring of 1686 at the head of 蛙合, a contest of frog verses among Bashō's circle, set against Senka 仙化's frog on a floating leaf in the first round; the contest's note on that round says the whole book grew from those two frogs.

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