To deny a drought, or climate end,
Ask how they kept their courses green,
Golfers, jockeys and those ascending
Unseen dukeries and queens
En route to monasteries,
Palaces and temples.
A river is not for mending.
I tried turning my mind upside down
And squeezing from this melancholic brain
Just like towels in a turbid
Samian stream
Or a memory of lemons
From a dry, unholy plain;
Yet the unfurnished words in my urn
Became vapour, became sky
And therefore irreverant.
Nonchalant gods
Dropped lapis lazuli
Into that cracked amphora
Not long after I died.
My quest remains
For something
That did not exist.
How futile.
How endless.
Seven Hundred Jisei 