Text (first contemplation: The newly departed)

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

"Her accustomed colour in everyday life has faded during her illness, and her fragrant body, as if asleep, has the appearance of somebody who has just passed away. Loved ones and friends of old are left behind and are still here, but whereto has her soul at dusk flown away?

We see flowers that suddenly wither during the third month of spring and the leaf of life easily falls at a certain moment in autumn. Old age and youth really have no fixed boundaries. What comes later and what come earlier are hard to get away from, whether fast or slow."