Meditations in Miniature: Ninety-Nine

1. Imitate the wind.
Keep your special quality
fluttering like a flag.

2. In the core of those sparks
that flew toward the sky,
you were caught,
and I too became ensnared.

3. To return again
to those unbearable memories...
the question simply doesn't arise!

4. The memories of the past
are now mere mirages
in this winter vigil.

5. Blue, blue whispers—
the warm-soft of sunset
enters ear to ear.

6. You came so late!
In darkness upon darkness,
how much time was squandered!

7. The wayfarer on the path
keeps watch for the sun
every single day!

8. On the bodies of flowers blooming in graves,
on the stones of epitaphs,
a star falls every day.

9. Keep your eyes on those claws
that scratch walls,
that tear pillows...

10. What an intellectual!
Looking at the mask,
he constructs theories of the face!

11. Standing just a little distance away,
that messenger,
in whose satchel lie
all the evidence of your forgotten past.

12. If you wish to stay beside me,
stay in such a way
that your clamor doesn't
break my meditation.

13. With great patience
I cast empty gazes
toward sky and road,
suppressing a chestful of sighs.

14. Swimming through the sky,
on mountain and plain—
who lives like that?
Fish of the water? Or humans of the land?

15. Beginning or end,
day or night—
all are one, if sleep breaks.

16. I gave life a name.
Then what?
How shall I feel it?
Remaining this detached?

17. I look outside the window...
I leave this body, abandon this room...
How do I break these stubborn wings!

18. One day, with a doubtful mind,
I had accepted:
more creatures are caged
outside the cage itself!

19. Breathe slowly;
if you exhaust it quickly,
you'll be quickly exhausted.

20. I don't look back,
I don't look ahead either.
I only
look at myself.