just as I am as a weed I put out buds
aru ga mama zassō to shite me o fuku
1936–1937 · At the Gochūan hermitage
Sōmokutō · A Landscape of Weeds (Zassō fūkei)
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The weed, asked by no one, puts out its buds just as it is. Laying himself over the nameless grass, neither in self-abasement nor defiance, he says only that one should live simply as such a thing. A poem on a spring morning, as if the smell of the soil were rising up.