Two more versions of the Basho haiku:

"Here they begin
The celebrated places of the provinces,
With a song of the fields"

--Earl Miner

"Aesthetics
begins in the back country
with planting songs."

--Lenore Mayhew

Earl Miner is one of the great scholars of Japanese poetry, yet I can't get anything out of his version. It is so different from the consensus translation (the sum of all published versions) that I have to wonder. Aunt Lenore's, on the other hand is an elegant variation on this consensus translation.