In Place 34

 34

the waterfall that runs in winter
runs, fills the hut with white noise;
to air dark corners, old woman
slides her window open





The waterfall’s music begins usually in late October or early November and in late May or early June it stops; though in 1993 it ran all year.

So many years spent idly contemplating
The immense white layer on the mountains;
This winter, all of a sudden,
I see it for the first time as a snow-mountain.
-- Dogen (tr. Stephen Heine)