If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Matsutake ya
shiranu ko-no-ha no
hebaritsuku

Basho, 1644-1694

R.B Blythe translates Basho’s haiku as follows:

The leaf of some unknown tree sticking on the mushroom.

I showed this translation to a Japanese composer friend. He said he did not find it very interesting. I said, “How would you translate it?” Two days later he brought me the following:

Mushroom does not know that leaf is sticking on it.

Getting the idea, I made during the next three years, the following:

That that’s unknown brings mushroom and leaf together.

And the one I prefer:

What leaf? What mushroom?