I am acquainted with a Kyoto monk by the name of Unchiku who once did a painting. Maybe it was a self-portrait, I don't know. It showed a monk with his face turned away. He asked me if I would write something on it, so I set down these words: You are more than sixty-years-old, and I am almost fifty. We are both shadows in a dream, the same dream, maybe. Then, as if talking in my sleep, I added my poem:
Turn and look back at me I am so lonely cold fall night