Waves Lapping to the Shore

Long ago
in a place called this world
a bell up on the mountain caught my ear.
Now, at dawn, I hear the waves
lapping the shore, carried by the breeze.
I have the feeling that for a long time
I was listening to the waves’ voices in the sound of the bell.

- Ooka Makoto
from “Songs of the Eternal Autumn”
(adaptations of the poems of Fujiwara Shunzei (1114 – 1204)