Clouds pile up about the rocky cliffs,

Touching the blue azure of eternity;

A lonely path gets tangled among the hills—

Not a single stranger threads it up steep slope.

In the far off I gaze at the heavy sphere

Hovered in the falling down twilight

And the orphaned toad gives a wink at me

With its third eye on the other moon’s side.

Its perfectly round face smiles at me,

Grinning from one absent ear to another,

And my mind becomes illuminated for a while.

I’m hearing warbling of a single nightingale—

Tweeting away, it sustains a note and

Sustains again, filling in holes in my soul.

I sit stiff, soaring above time and space—

Kaleidoscope of images and symbols,

Following the beating of my heart and

Breathing technique of my vital points,

Passes in endless train before my glance

To drive me away, and only the deities

And spirits know the terminal point

Of my journey up to the next morning.

Lodging upon the peak of my cloudy cliff,

I idly live in my hut under the pine trees

And behind a hedge. I let my life in retreat

End smoothly its course by bringing

This lump of clay to its yellow source.

Having a sigh, I think over my past

Up tonight and the rest of my innocence,

For the umpteenth time,

Like a mountain brook springing out

Its fathomless womb, flows east to merge

With ever violent sea of timeless ups

And inescapable downs that, as before,

Grip me from taking a leap high

Into the blue azure of eternity. . .