A Wavering Horizon

The whole painting burns yellow.
Earth and sky alike
tremble in a single light.
Above, a thin line.
That is the horizon.

Below that line
a boat floats like a dot.
Lower down,
black brushstrokes surge like wind,
and beside them a thatched house crouches.
A person, too, stands small.
He is not large.
The house is small, the boat far away.
Yet among all these wavering things,
he, the smallest,
is the center of this painting.
A person always stands somewhere.
Underfoot is the earth,
overhead is the sky,
and behind him the wind blows.
When the world reels,
he is not afloat.
He keeps his feet on the earth to the end.
Byun Shi-Ji did not paint a landscape.
He painted a person who still stands
before a wavering world.
Somewhere today, too,
someone stands that way.