稲妻に こぼるる音や 竹の露 inazuma ni koboruru oto ya take no tsuyu buson 蕪村 A flash of lightning! The sound of dew Dripping down the bamboos

A flash of lightning!
The sound of dew
Dripping down the bamboos ^[1]

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. The first print reads 露, and so does every later edition except two books of 1925 and their reissues, 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.

References:

^[1] After R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 3, Summer–Autumn (Hokuseido Press, 1952), p. 69.

The verse is Buson's, first printed in 1784 in the 蕪村句集, the selection of his verse that his disciple Kitō 几董 published the winter after the poet's death; no witness dates its composition.

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