Cage claims (in Themes and Variations) that "a haiku in Japanese has no fixed meaning. Its words are not defined syntactically"
Retallack, reviewing Cage: "A literal translation of a Basho haiku would go like this:"
pine mushroom
ignorance leaf of tree
adhesiveness
"This group of words is left syntactically, and therefore semantically, free to stimulate a meditative or imaginative response in the reader as collaborator" (Retallack)
Unclear whether this example is from Cage or not, or even if this is remotely true