Text (ninth contemplation: The old graves)

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

"The five aggregates may by nature all be empty, in their course and at their end, during his whole life one loves this person. Remaining at the burial mound, the mysterious soul flies in the moonlight of the night and having left the corpse the ignorant soul rustles in the autumn wind.

The name remains, without form, at the edge of the pine-clad hills. The Bones turn to ashes in the grassy marsh. The inscriptions on the stones are obliterated and indistinct. At the graves of the ancients tears redden (the eyes)."