"Here he lies where he longed to be, / Home is the sailor, home from sea"

Between deadlines and distractions and a built-up a backlog, I basically spent a month-plus not translating. With deadlines done and backlog exhausted, I take up a new poem and settle in, digging into the images and cadences, balancing out the play of sounds, and a part of me I hadn't realized was wound up relaxes. Ah -- this stuff. I've been missing it.

    I keep tallying
the grains of sand on the beach
    by the wide ocean:
may they total as many
as my lord's millennia.

—Anonymous, Kokinshu #344

It is not quite an addiction. But it is not far from one.

Much like writing.

---L.