I take off my cap and hang it on a jutting stone;
A wind from the pine-trees tickles on my bare head.— Translated by Arthur Waley, 1919
A small advantage: having
so little hair remaining while I vacate use.
I loaf in my boat, motor and mind
extinguished for the silence of breeze.
My boat bobs in decaying wakes
of distant speed boats muttering in silence.
That same breeze,
the stillest smallest voice of molecular isness,
whispers through my hair.
It sings lotus-softly with perfect carelessness,
hair through hair by hair,
each fine and delicately tuned old filament
tickling my bare scalp into a flowing wheat field.
Discrete golden caresses.
My hat sits collapsed
only a couple of feet from this unharvested joy.
Then a hungry gust takes my hat.
The lake gulps down both while I fumble for an oar.
My drowning hat burbles to remind me how intimate
is the hard-earned loneness of humans.
Poor hat. Poor bitcoined humanity.
A looming void—
