By Ryozui Ryosen, a fourteenth-century Japanese Zen monk. The poem is the first recorded mention of ramen in Japan and was deciphered last year by Hajime Yoshizawa, an associate professor at Meisei University, in Tokyo. The Daizo sutra is a compilation of Buddhist writings consisting of 5,048 scrolls. Translated from the classical Chinese.

Bodies prone and heads unflinching under the rod,
look at them stretched flat. How marvelous!
These ties of the five thousand scrolls will unravel in my empty belly;
out the Daizo sutra’s words will flow, and settle there inside me.