Nothing is lost; the universe is honest,
Time, like the sea, gives all back in the end,
But only in its own way, on its own conditions:
Empires as grains of sand, forests as coal,
Mountains as pebbles. Be still, be still, I say;
You were never the water, only a wave;
Not substance, but a form substance assumed.
Nothing is lost; the universe is honest, Time, like the sea, gives all back in the end, But only in its own way, on its own conditions: Empires as grains of sand, forests as coal, Mountains as pebbles. Be still, be still, I say; You were never the water, only a wave; Not substance, but a form substance assumed.
Elder Olson, 1968
“Every shrub, every tree -
if one has not forgotten
where they were planted -
has beneath the fallen snow
some vestige of its form.”
--Shōtetsu