盗人に とり残されし 窓の月 nusubito ni torinokosareshi mado no tsuki ryōkan 良寛 The thief, left behind, the moon in my window

The thief,
left behind,
the moon in my window ^[1]

盗人にとり残されし窓の月 (nusubito ni torinokosareshi mado no tsuki): what the thief left behind, the moon in the window.

This verse by the Zen monk Ryōkan (Taigu Ryōkan) is about the one thing a thief cannot take. A Japanese writer said a thief can steal only what self-interest can touch. Ryōkan's sense of beauty stands apart from it, and no thief can do anything with that. Another reading hears a smile in the verse, as if the poet had stolen the moon from the thief.

In the Japanese, the moon is the thing left behind and the thief is the one who left it. The whole verse is a single phrase that ends on 窓の月, the moon in the window. The moon marks the season as autumn.

Translation Notes:

Here we read 盗人 as nusubito. One also sees this read nusutto.

References:

^[1] After R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 3 (Hokuseido Press, 1952), p. 395.

The verse is first printed as Ryōkan's in a life of him published in 1914, eighty-three years after his death, which reports it as hearsay inside a story of a robe given to a thief; the collected edition of 1918 prints it under a one-line headnote naming a burglary at his hut.

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