This little boat of mine, truly a lone leaf,
and beneath it, the sound of dark swells:
I keep paddling in depths of night, drunk,
pleasures of home, bed and desk,forgotten.
At dawn, when I ask about the road ahead,
I’m already past a thousand ridges rising
beyond ridges. O where am I going here,
this Way forever leaving ever returning?
Never arriving, what can we understand,
and always leaving, what’s left to explain?
translated by David Hinton