Toki-no-Ge (Satori poem) - Muso Soseki

Year after year
      I dug in the earth
            looking for the blue of heaven
only to feel
      the pile of dirt
            choking me
until once in the dead of night
      I tripped on a broken brick
            and kicked it into the air
and saw that without a thought
      I had smashed the bones
            of the empty sky

---

Muso Soseki  (1275 – 1351) Japan
Translated by M.S. Merwin
Source: East window: the Asian poems, selected and translated by W.S. Merwin, Copper Canyon Press, 1998