When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.

Why so scrawny, cat? Starving for fat fish or mice... Or backyard love?

Without bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance all over the world?

Summer grasses — all that remains of great soldiers' imperial dreams.

A flute with no holes is not a flute.

Go to the object. Leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Do not impose yourself on the object. Become one with the object. Plunge deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there.

Spring rain conveyed under the trees in drops.