Fûryû no  /  hajime ya oku no  /  taueuta.

Here is another Basho haiku I've been thinking about.

Haruo Shirane:

Beginning of poetry
the rice-planting song
of the Interior


Lucien Stryk:

Birth of art
song of rice planters
chorus from nowhere


Nobuyuki Yuasa:

The first poetic venture
I came across--
the rice planting songs
of the far North

This poem has the advantage of being set in a prose context. The brevity of the haiku is compensated for by the fact that the poems are meant to be read in a rich, thick cultural context. This poem occurs in Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North. I'll see if I can't round up a few more versions of it.