Text (eighth contemplation: The scattering of the Bones)

Translation of Chinese poem accompanying the eighth of nine contemplations from the seventeenth-century Japanese artist Morishige.

"Creeping herbs finally tie up her Bones, although they are lonely and scattered. Scattered there and abandoned here, they are hard to find even when one is looking for them. Separated, nails and Hair fill the open plain and the skull is rotting at the edge of a rock.

On rainy evenings, when it is cloudy in the West, it rots year after year. In stormy weather, when it is dark in the East, it everywhere goes to ruin. Suddenly it becomes earth on the plain of the Dragon Gate. One does not know to whom, disgraced or honoured, the coffin formerly belonged."