When you climb from water to dry land, can you recognize your own drowned body?
Again and again it drowns, all washes away— honor, respect, relations, some ornaments. Then why doesn't a person's name drown too?
What happens when you drown chest-deep in water... Only the shadow grows longer!
Who floats then, wave upon wave? Whose beloved face is this? Whose friend? Whose child? Whose refuge? No one knows... Only the shadows grow in length.
Birds, trees, rivers, fields— from them I learn how to live without becoming empty, even when feathers fall, bark peels away, water runs dry, grass withers.
You want to know life, perhaps? Don't look the other way, look here. I am not empty. I am alive.