"News"

Driving the other morning I heard someone on NPR say, “Poetry is news that stays news.” You read the local newspaper, and today’s news is forgotten tomorrow. Crash’s win at the Oscars will be “old news” soon, and almost forgotten at next year’s Academy. But Poetry? It is somehow perennial. The following lines will be as much “news” in one hundred years as they are today:

When all thoughts
Are exhausted
I slip into the woods
And gather
A pile of “shepherd’s purse.”

Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.

--Ryokan