When I visited this shrine of Truth
a crane came to the paradise garden.
Brush in hand, I wrote out two large words
happily expecting they'd last a thousand years.
It cried out as moonlight shone through pines,
danced and danced as wind swept the bamboo.
The road to heaven, how vast and far it is!
You and I will go there together.

*****When I saw that clumsy crow

Flap from a wasted tree,
A shape in the mind rose up:

When I go I will give you surely
What you will wear if you go with me;
A blanket of red and a bright girdle,
Two new moccasins and a silver necklace.
When I go I will give you surely
What you will wear if you go with me!

When I am dead, withhold, I pray, your blooming legacy;
Beneath the willows did I bide, and they should cover me;
I longed for light and fragrance, and I sought them far and near,
O, it would grieve me utterly, to find them on my bier!

Of all the rhymes of all the climes
Of where and when and how,
We best and most can boost and boast
The Golden Age of NOW!

The mother-hands no further toil may know;
The mother-eyes smile not on you and me;
The mother-heart is stilled, alas! — But O
The mother-love abides eternally.

When I am alone,
The wind in the pine-trees
Is like the shuffling of waves
Upon the wooden sides of a boat.

When he trades in tea — it's right nearby,
on the slopes of the green mountains.
But now he trades in pearls, and must seek them afar,
along the coast of the vast sea!
Our family needs so much food and clothing...
surging, surging, the waves where the whales play
sadden my heart!

When he kicked the ball under a plum tree,
a blossom fell, fluttering, and the ball stayed in the sky.
Kicking the ball high is what a good player does.
How I love my lord in pale blue hakama , as he kicks the ball!
My lord is good at playing ball.

Ever since I dozed off
and met the one I long for,
I've begun to count on
these things called dreams