The morning glory
has taken my well bucket.
I go and beg for water.
— Chiyo-ni · AI translation
The original
asagao ni / tsurube torarete / morai mizu
That is the source, in romaji. It is printed here rather than kept in a footnote because the English above is machine-made, not a scholar’s, and you should be able to check it against something rather than take it on trust.
The rendering follows the sense rather than forcing 5-7-5. Japanese counts on rather than syllables, and the two do not line up; padding a translation out to fit the English shape is how you end up with a poem the poet did not write.
Fukuda Chiyo-ni 1703–1775
The most widely read woman in the tradition, and a Buddhist nun in later life. She was recognised as a poet while still young, at a time when very few women were published at all.
Why this is here at all
HaikuMail is a Chrome extension that hides your inbox behind a search-only reader, and holds the first thirty seconds with a poem. This is one of the 157 it draws from. That is the rest of the story.