No End Point

by Muso Soseki

English version by W. S. Merwin
Original Language Japanese

The whole world is clear and empty
     to the ten directions
          There is no end point
And yet when we
     look carefully
          there is one after all
You fly out of this world
     looking backward
          riding the giant roc
into the hollow of a lotus thread
     to live there where heaven and earth
          were never divided

-- from Sun at Midnight: Muso Soseki - Poems and Sermons, Translated by W. S. Merwin / Translated by Soiku Shigematsu

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No End Point