Frosty skies open empty depths of wind.
Moonlight floods fulling-stones clarities.
As the dream ends, I am dying at night:
I am beside a beautiful woman, thoughts
deepening–a leaf trees shed in the dark,
a lone goose leaving borderlands behind.
Then I’m in travel clothes, setting out,
heart and mind all distances beyond sky.
translated by David Hinton
Don’t really understand that second line? fulling-stones?
I had a note on an earlier poem to explain it but I guess you didn’t see it. It’s mentioned a few times by poets and refers to a tradition in autumn when women pounded winter clothes on stones to thicken the cloth for winter. It was associated with grieving for loved ones gone off to war.
thank you