Poem Dated 1821

Noro adopts a running script in this calligraphy, light and rhythmical, at times even continuing an ending stroke of a character with the beginning of another. The poem written here was excerpted from a longer one by Su Dongpo (1037-1101), an earlier Chinese literati-scholar. In the poem, Su draws from two inspirations: he took as his subject two landscape paintings by his friend Wang Shen, and used the rhythm of an earlier poem by his younger brother Su Zhe. The exceptionally long and vertical stroke at the end of the calligraphy is the most salient vehicle conveying Noro’s boundless expression and his search for emancipation from the secular world. 山人昔與雲俱出，俗駕今隨水不回。 賴我胸中有佳處，一樽時對畫圖開。 [A] mountain hermit used to travel along with clouds, now secular chariots have gone with the water I have a marvelous place in my chest, I open it up before the paintings with a glass of wine