Sunday, February 10, 2019
This Life
Poem attributed to Ikkyū Sōjun (1394-1481), tr. Adam L. Kern:
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this life —The same, tr. Evgeny Steiner, with his note:
eating, shitting,
sleeping, rising
and after that
death
In this world
We slop, we shit,
We sleep, we rise.
So we live.
What then? We die.57
57 This is an accurate translation of the Japanese original, in which Ikkyū uses some rather crude expressions (kuu — to slop or gobble, etc.)
