The old pond, a frog jumps in, the sound of water^[1] furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto 古池や 蛙飛込 水の音 bashō 芭蕉

古池や蛙飛込水の音 is Matsuo Bashō's 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 classical word for a frog and marks the spring, and 飛込, to leap in, is written here without its kana ending. In 1783 the commentator Sanriki set down three sentences on 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 earliest prints of the verse read here are of 1686: it stands at the head of 蛙合, a contest of frog verses among Bashō's circle held that spring, set against Senka 仙化's frog on a floating leaf in the first round; the contest's note on that round, as Hattori quotes it, says the whole book grew from those two frogs.