The thief, left behind, the moon in my window^[1] nusubito ni torinokosareshi mado no tsuki 盗人に とり残されし 窓の月 ryōkan 良寛

[1] The English above is adapted from R. H. Blyth's, in his Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics of 1942.

The verse is given to the Zen monk Ryōkan, and the story told with it is a legend: its tellings agree that a thief came, and not on what he took. In one, Ryōkan gives the thief his old padded robe. Asatarō Miyamori, who carried the verse into English in 1932, told it this way:

One night a thief broke into the poet's house and stole some property. The following morning, when his family were distressed over the burglary, he unconcernedly composed the above verse.

R. H. Blyth wrote:

In any other poet but Ryôkan this verse might be suspected of affectation, but our knowledge of Ryôkan's daily life enables us to read this as it was written, in complete simplicity and truth.

A Japanese writer put it simply in 1924: a thief can take only what self-interest can touch, and Ryōkan's sense of beauty stands apart from self-interest, so no thief can do anything with it.