The young-old monk, watcher
over infants and mad crones,
gets a late spring offering —
handful of vinca blossoms
Jizo
once greeted visitors to the homestead, but lost his head more than
once as water hoses were hauled around the garden. In his new location
at the hut he is a hermit, but has never left off his practice. The
stone behind him was raised from the dry creek bed the preceding summer.
Firmly based on steadiness, it can't be surpassed.
A shining window below the green pines --
jade palaces or vermilion towers can't compare with it.
-- Shitou, "Song of the Grass-Roof Hut" in Taishō shinshū daizōkyō (1924-33) reprinted in Hongzhi, Cultivating the Empty Field, 2000, tr. Leighton and Yi Wu