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Nowhere at all

to pour out my bath water —

insects everywhere, singing.

Onitsura · AI translation

The original

gyōzui no / sutedokoro nashi / mushi no koe

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.

Uejima Onitsura 1661–1738

A contemporary of Bashō, working independently of him, who argued that a verse without makoto — sincerity, or truth to what was actually seen — was not a poem however skilful.

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.