A Love Letter
Within a circle of one meter
You sit, pray and sing.
Within a shelter ten meters large
You sleep well, rain sounds a lullaby.
Within a field a hundred meters large
Raise rice and goats.
Within a valley a thousand meters large
Gather firewood, water, wild vegetables and Amanitas.
Within a forest ten kilometers large
Play with raccoons, hawks,
Poison snakes and butterflies.
Mountainous country Shinano
A hundred kilometers large
Where someone lives leisurely, they say.
Within a circle ten thousand kilometers large
Go to see the southern coral reef in summer
Or winter drifting ices in the sea of Okhotsk.
Within a circle ten thousand kilometers large
Swimming in the sea of shooting stars.
Within a circle a million kilometers large
Upon the spaced-out yellow mustard blossoms
The moon in the east, the sun west.
Within a circle ten billion kilometers large
Pop far out of the solar system mandala.
Within a circle ten thousand light years large
Andromeda is melting away into snowing cherry flowers.
Now within a circle ten billion light years large
All thoughts of time, space are burnt away.
There again you sit pray and sing
You sit, pray and sing.
— Nanao Sakaki
from Break The Mirror
(North Point Press)
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