After all, what should be done? The query
brings back to a beginning a way of thought it was hard for me to follow.
After all, doesn't it matter?
No, no, infinitely no.
It is best to wait, and with the first strength
it is best to destroy your weakness that is quick with such a question.
To think of a predicted result is not decent.
To live with the right source,
only that is pure.
In order to stir up your being further,
once again raise up your head high.
Shining right over this dark Komagome Hill that is asleep
and silent,
it is good to see that really red star.
Mars is out.
A cold blast makes a rattle-rattle sound in the honey locust pods.
A rutting dog dashes around madly.
If I step on fallen leaves
and pass the bushes,
a cliff.
Mars is out.
I do not know
I what a human being must do.
I do not know
what a human being should try to get.
I think
that a human being can become part of nature.
I am feeling
that a human being is great because he is equal to
nothingness.
Oh I am shaken,
how hopeful to be equal to nothingness !
Even nothingness is destroyed
by natural spreading.
Mars is out.
The sky turns around behind it.
Innumerable far worlds are coming up.
Unlike poets of old days, I do not
see a twinkling of angels in it anymore.
I just listen
to what is like profound waves of ether.
And simply
the world is wonderful.
Its weird grace filled with things unknown
presses toward me tightly, tightly.
Mars is out.
The revolving of the solid earth cannot be ended.
I flick off cherry blossom petals that were brought in stuck to the
newspaper.
Inside myself another solid earth rotates.
The evergreen shrub's white flowers have disappeared.
The ginko trees have turned into brooms.
Like a sharp sharp piercing, winter has come.
Everyone dislikes winter.
Deserted by grasses and trees, run away from by insects, winter has come.
Winter,
come to me, come to me.
I have winter's strength, winter is my victim.
Permeate through, penetrate into!
Make fires break out! Bury with snow I
Like a sharp knife, winter has come.
Chieko goes to places one cannot go,
does what cannot be done.
Chieko does not see the me that really exists,
yearns for me in back of me.
Chieko throws away the heaviness of suffering now,
wanders out to a vast infinite sphere of esthetic consciousness.
Though hearing her voice calling me over and over,
Chieko does not have a ticket for the human world anymore.
A circle of children raised their hands.
All together
lovely
bloody hands they raised.
The moon rose.
On the hill a man is standing.
Under the hat is his face.
You frogs!
Inside the tangle of blue pampas grass and reeds
frogs seem to be bulging out whitely.
In the evening scene filled with rainfall
the gyo, gyo, gyo, gyo of crying frogs.
Striking and beating on the utterly dark ground,
this is a night violent with rain and wind.
On the chilled grasses and leaves too
frogs draw in a soft breath,
the gyo, gyo, gyo, gyo of crying frogs.
You frogs!
My being is not far away from you.
With a lamp in my hand I
was watching the surface of the dark garden,
was watching with fatigued mind leaves of grasses and trees sagging
in rain.
Oh in the plaintive twilight of spring,
to want the shade between building and building in the complicated
city,
to go along tossed about inside the huge crowds, how joyful it is.
Look, this sight of crowds that go flowing by.
One wave overlapping upon another wave,
the waves making innumerable shadows, and the shadows move on swaying.
The distress and sorrows of each one of the people all
disappear there among the shadows, leaving no trace.
Oh with how tranquil a mind I go walking along this street.
Oh this joyful shadow of the great love and innocence.
The sensation of being carried along beyond the joyful
waves becomes almost like weeping.
In the desolate twilight of a day of spring,
these groups of lovers swimming under the eaves from building to building,
where and in what way do they go flowing along I wonder?
My sorrowful gloominess is covered up in the one big
shadow on the earth, flowing waves of the drifting innocence.
Oh I want to go on being tossed by these waves of crowds
no matter where, no matter where.
Waves far ahead on the horizon look indistinct.
Toward one, only one direction, let me flow along.
Do you hear it with your ears,
eternal man, Buddha?
And I too, following along after that crowd,
aware of my own solitary footsteps,
was walking toward the park near springtime.
Trout with moles on their backs
arc clearly swimming along the river shore in sunlight.
In several rows
their gentle bodies are shining.
On the white sand their shadows
like shadow pictures
are becoming bigger, becoming smaller,
and at times become dim.
Even the shadows of the water making beads
go falling to the sandy bottom.
When astonished by just a slight noise
the trout scatter like flowers
and gather again.
One trout, handsome, and larger than the others in the group,
perhaps leading the group sometimes,
comes out a little upstream in the current,
or proudly swims up high to the surface
and turns over flipping.
Completely silent ripples are made.
After that there is only the smell of young leaves on the river bank.
But I have never had the experience of hearing a baby-
tending song.
For me who did not know a person called mother in childhood
the memory of such a song could not be imagined to exist.
But strangely
on a day when snow is falling it is heard,
a song I have not experienced hearing anywhere is heard.
Though boats touched by the rain
seem to move
they are fastened.
From the eaves of a roof a streak of smoke rises up.
From a window a child eagerly watches a streetcar on the
bridge for as long as it is there.
Figures of people on the street all reflect upon the
water and
quietly they disappear.
The smoke still rises up.
A woman who looks like the mother of the child
washes a green bunch of leeks.
In the hushed rainfall everything has turned into a fantasy of the bridge.
Of a hundred experiences it always
has to be the sum total of only one.
One drop of water dew
becomes the harvest of all dewdrops,
a dark evening's one red point of light
is the night of the whole world.
And after that my poem
like a substance entirely fresh,
released far away from my memory,
the same as a scythe in a field in the morning,
the same as the ice on a lake in spring,
will suddenly begin to sing from its own recollection.
Frost binds the ridges solemnly severed furrow from furrow;
the long harp-sound of the wind runs by,
one first white star
strikes the highest note.
Winter fades widely, widely like an ancient;
though spring is yet far away
presentiments already hover between heaven and earth.
I step on this late earth that is growing dark
and throw seeds from my hand
overflowing like the evening sun
and heavy because of faith in seeds.
They sink
like stuff that serves deeply,
to transform the nights under the ground
and enlighten gradually the far daybreak.
A pure and clear condensation is felt.
Now, within the greyish silence around,
my being is a reverent anthem.
And already hearing
(the harvest field like a festival,
burning noon kingfisher colored)
June like the sea.
Frequently I am impelled to stand still,
as though to authenticate the distance to an object.
That distance is being replenished,
behold, by thick whirlwinds and billions of air particles.
Yesterday I watched smoke of field fires ascend from several
places of this plateau,
today listen to faint birds in a forest of fallen leaves.
For ten days I have not heard news of the city,
undulations of fields and mountains where clouds gather and
narrow pathways run through blue-green withered grasses and
occasional trains descend a ravine shouldering cliffs
and. . .
Yes, existing clear and separate from each other,
being strong indeed in their final essence and fate,
aspects of objects always express their own most proper splendors.
In this way, being entirely alone,
to all phenomena of the world
I give praise for original corresponding splendors.
But to be swayed is not a comfortable thing, you know.
From the outside I can be seen through. Look !
Inside my digestive organs
is a toothbrush with worn-out bristles
and also a small amount of yellowish water.
That dirty-looking thing called my soul
does not exist anymore now.
Together with the tubes of my belly
it was snatched away by the waves.
Me? What I am
is a thing of emptiness, you know,
emptiness swayed by the waves
and again swayed back and forth by the waves.
Shriveling up and then soon afterward
opening wisteria-purple,
night after night
burning a lamp.
No, that which is being swayed about actually
is only the soul which has lost the body
that is the soul's wrapping
of thin rice paper.
No, no, so much emptiness came from
swaying, swaying,
tossing, tossing pain's
fatigued shadow which is all that it is !
Beyond pale darkness
their echoes respond.
Elegant-looking tips of the trees
are hearing the silent fog that is coming down,
that fog turning into drops of water on twigs
and softly dripping down.
On the path that continues into the fog
I stop walking and listen
to voices of lonely cuckoos.
Droplets of water make a separating curtain,
and from an eternal end is heard
that monotonous repetition.
I look back at the lengthy time
of my short life,
estrangements of affection and
a period of many betrayals.
Beloved persons who have departed too,
scattered-away friends too,
all of them have gone inside this fog
and perhaps exist somewhere in the end of the fog.
Now already there is no way to search.
From end to end
the enveloping fog thickens and thickens.
All the loneliness for what cannot be regained
is swept along very quickly.
Here and there in the ocean of fog
like spirit and spirit that call to each other
cuckoos are crying,
cuckoos are crying.
In transient daylight
the faint scent of skin.
Fine wrinkles
of the thin flowerpetals
of a woman who has not known sensuality.
Like bruises that are ripe,
smears of light blue color,
those marks which remain all over her body
are traces of fingers of the people who touched her passing by.
The same as unsold fruit
at the shop-front of a fruit store.
A woman became naked. Just for a while
to change a summer dress into an autumn dress.
The lakeshore's landscape
is precipitous with crystals.
Among the frozen rockeries are stirring
young goats.
Mountain after mountain darkens, with
mottled snow,
mountain after mountain shines, like
rosy wine.
Without being pursued by the hurry of time,
as though just making smoke
the days have moved along
swaying like shadows of jewel-balls.
I came so I could walk upon the snowy path
where turtledoves cry in the forest of larch trees
and be away from the rough-hearted people
who both day and night give themselves to the war.
In the solitary way of one going blind,
at the side of the lake frozen all over with ice, day after day
I come to stand for a while
as though arrived there in a dream.
My spirit rising and rising rebelliously,
i my poetry afraid of being seen,
f close to purified death, the eternal hand,
I are to be buried in ice until next spring.
I have come to escape
from that spiritual poverty
i and from the unreasonable
I hunting-out.
Separating from feeble friends
who have forgotten to be critical,
leaving loved rooms
where I slept and arose for months and years.
Everything will turn into bones and ashes
because of the stupidity of human beings who forget human beings.
My moans of suffering come from this too.
The lights fade away. All around is an empty commotion.
Snowflakes fall from high branches of trees.
Withered bush-clover rustles.
Underneath the thick ice
dead water blows on a dosho
And then the glittering stars' animated
nighttime,
the enchased heavens'
unfeeling spectacle!
From this corner to that corner, meanly and stingily
all of us are being counted up.
And, unlimited rudeness,
all of us are drafted—stupid idiots.
Birth certificates, they ought to be burned right away.
Nobody should remember my son.
My son,
be concealed away inside this hand.
Hide away for a while underneath a hat.
Both your father and mother in the house at the foot of the mountain
have talked about it all night long.
Soaking the withered forest at the foot of the mountain,
making sounds like twigs breaking, crackle, crackle,
the whole night rain was falling.
My son, you are soaked wet to the skin
carrying a heavy gun, gasping for breath,
walking along as if fallen into a trance. What place is it?
That place is not known. But for you
both your father and mother go outside to search aimlessly.
The night hateful with only such dreams,
the long anxious nighttime, at last ends.
The rain has let up.
In the sky vacant without my son,
well, how damnably disgusting,
like a shabby worn-out bathrobe,
Fuji!
Around the flowers
air becomes more and more cold,
not even a moth appears now.
No letter from anywhere,
autumn nights
the sound of insects
flows like water.
What is the sound of insects crying through the night
seeking for?
Into me it comes flowing,
finally turns to a river of ice.
A night skylark
without a place to land
sings infinitely in the height of the sky.
You, the one that was judged last,
presently
will fall down into the sea of fire.
Inside myself also
something continually keeps moving along.
Possibly
it might be an express train.
The middle of the night . . .
though almost all noises have faded away,
in the ears' intensely dark tunnel
there is something hurrying through.
Danger!
Unconsciously shouting,
my own voice awakens me,
the one eye of an intensely red signal
keeps staring at me.
From morning
until late at night
time is regulated by stop-go signals.
Danger!
Larger than an infant's head,
a single egg
comes rolling down from somewhere
and crosses the street. . . .
Inside the intense darkness
now again
cable cars
are seen to be crossing.
For the sake of public construction work,
I thought, maybe, they were loaded
full of cement,
but with skeletons only
the cable cars were loaded,
one after another
endlessly moving away.
Covering a small
city's sky,
the enormous balloon.
From the morning until the night it
dingle-dangled about like a ghost.
This city's population
completely tired of living,
in the sky
even the sun's existence had been forgotten. But
at the balloon's appearance, with fear and trembling
they look up at the sky all the time.
When
and what kind of accident will happen cannot be known s<
the entire city
developed more hubbub than a revolution.
Into every direction the police
dispatched detectives, but
the important criminal was not discovered any place at all.
—Please report if you see the man who gave the yawn I
—Also as many details as possible about the man's appearance!
Although such assistance was desired from the city's population,
a man who is yawning
is far too common and
which was the genuine criminal couldn't be learned.
In spite of their reputation
the police were worn out by it all.
And now still
above that small city's roofs
the balloon
dingle-dangles about the same as ever.
At the whim of the blowing wind,
to the west,
to the east . . .
That because of this he himself is a part of the field,
that he is the whole of it.
To turn into the wind too, to turn into the dried grasses too,
and even to turn into a streak of light too
inside the fox-colored desolate field,
almost like existing or not existing,
is being like a shadow, that too he realizes.
He realizes how to run almost like the wind too, to run
even quicker than light too.
Because of this he believes that his figure is invisible to anybody.
A thing that is invisible is running while thinking.
A thought alone is running.
Without anyone being aware of it the midday moon has
risen above the desolate field.
Over there on the desert
underneath the non-objective sky which is drying up bit by bit,
clinging to the one single blade of grass that is left on earth,
it is the last butterfly sending up a signal.
On the other side of the valley
by the mountain opposite,
poised on top of the thin forest—Venus.
Presently that woman is hidden by a ridge.
I climb up onto a rock.
For a while she is visible.
Presently that woman is hidden by a ridge.
I get up onto a hilltop.
For a while she is visible.
That woman vanishes. That woman goes down.
That woman goes down. She goes away.
Earth is warped. . . . The mountain tilts. . . .
Those bubbles, each one, each one,
inside blurred spheres,
although they contain abundant discontent, dissatisfaction,
on the water surface
they are transient, disappear, and are gone.
At night
bubbles
at the river bottom
lie dormant in the midst of muddy earth, but
when midday comes
dim rays of light shine into them and
carelessly, absently, they come rising up.
Deception's light!
Those hands!
Being tempted,
the river bottom's dark dark world—
Although down there is the dwelling place of bubbles,
although down there is where it is their merit to expand
fully their surface tensions.
Anyway I
riding on a painted electric train
have come all the way,
and was reading Camus in the car.
Among the dried grasses
violets are out, their purple.
On the rocks the fruit of wild roses
lies darkened like water drops of recollection.
Oh forever is a transparent stomach.
Bones, nature,
are they only its feces?
Everywhere the great excretion of spring.
And yet within it,
undigested, the dubiousness of human beings.
For the sake of a shriveled-up mummy
I
pray a long time.
Big naked primitive
with blue organs inside!
He often
slipped on the polished artificial marble.
With teeth exposed, he looked back, but
nobody was there.
Poor raw-smelling spirit
that strayed into a peculiar country !
Here
is a transparent hell
where everything evaporates.
First death too,
second death too,
and even the myth.
The horse
recognized a mystic sign
at a strange city corner—
his race's eternal transmigration,
that intense red Pegasus.
I strain my intent ears.
Then suddenly, boisterously,
combined with the noise of the door of an abandoned
greenhouse falling down
is heard the scream of shattering glass.
Because of my horror I
unexpectedly drop my pen.
An invisible current of air whirls around me and
passes away—
soon, alone, I laugh at myself
and resume writing my new essay on poetry.
I am sure tomorrow
upon the blown-out morning sky,
with so much whiteness they hurt my forehead,
popping, the plum blossoms might open up.
It comes flowing into the canal
that is stagnant, dully,
where the bridge is suspended.
The bridge is neither going toward a future
nor coming from a past,
just from the opposite shore, to this shore,
it is only hanging
over a dead current
and just fastening together two nights.
When night becomes late, over there at its top
an aged man and a young woman come
and, without appearing confident,
casually hug one another.
This place is not an ocean.
With no origin, without an outlet.
The bottom of night, a river without a name.
Destiny is motionless,
destiny's river.
Inside a warmish mist
smelling of a horse's odor
a blood-filled lamp shines all night long,
and out of the shade, totteringly,
a person from the past comes staggering,
augh, pours out quantities of vomit.
At the bottom of human consciousness
the backed-up waters of sin without an outlet,
sleeping, that tender river.
Past this expression that has no future
the thing that is crouching heavily
with its black weight
is a large "now."
A young couple who will be married
keep watching him for a long time
and wonder about life
while against a narrow flexible-looking
white fence they are leaning.
Inside the roaring sounds of the city's commotion
fragrance has faded away.
The slaughter keeps on continuously.
The bombs of the bombing planes
are released like waterfalls.
Immature books have been blasted away,
superfluous desires have been burnt out,
the ground is completely filling with poisonous gases.
Amongst the accumulated smells of rotting
there is only one thing that is not at all shaken,
an abandoned pair of glasses.
When the fly was chased by a hand
he flew away gently.
Toward that attitude of composure
I felt friendliness.
Late at night
with the electric light shining,
listening to the sounds of rain outside.
I was reading a book.
On a page of the opened book
a single fly
cast a shadow of loneliness without realizing it.
Forever, like a fly's legs, is
thinly bending.
Dangerously near tumbling off,
what I thought of was the things of my future.
Time was imagined like the legs of an infant who has not
yet walked.
No matter what happens anywhere
there is nothing else to do
but stand on this steep cliff, clench my teeth, and close
my eyes.
The unexperienced future
like fishermen's fires flickering past the horizon
has darkness around itself.
I seem to have thrown my body down into that ocean.
An affectionate arm-pillow is loaned to me.
I fondle only that arm.
Except for that
no body,
no face,
no hair.
Who do you think the person is?
Guess please.
There are stars up above Japan.
They, on a winter's night,
each night, each night,
are seen linked like heavy chains.
The sky was filled with the glitter of stars.
Snow was frozen hard.
Next door the bride, suffering after childbirth,
lay in bed with swollen cheeks.
You cat! Don't cry so stubbornly and terribly.
Again tonight it is so silent that
on the road through the snow several kinds of creatures
are walking around.
It seems I go walking with someone, such a bright path.
It is so beautiful that
I want to hold the light in my hands and look at it.
If we should meet inside such moonlight,
without saying anything she
would probably come following after me
and it would probably become clear we both told lies.
And you
to my night
give many many meanings
of grief and wishes
that cannot be told.
O griefs, wishes, and what tenderness.
Though nothing exists,
in my night,
the whole night
the green beam from a lighthouse wanders.
"Wait, wait,
the bones can still be sucked on !"
We all looked back
and the duck's laughing and
glittering keel of bones was seen.
Apple and pear and grape varieties,
every one of them,
piled up as they are in a pose
in sleeping
in a unified harmony,
enter into magnificent music.
Each one's deepest place having been reached into,
cores leisurely lay themselves down.
Around them
circles an abundant time of rotting.
Now in front of the dead's teeth,
like rocks with nothing coming out of them,
those varieties of fruit
more and more increase their weight.
And within the deep bowl,
inside an apparition of this night,
eventually,
lean far over.
By a downy cheek
a half-warm wind blows
It is pleasant to look for flowers when melancholy.
It is even better, while smiling, to give those flowers to someone.
But even more than that, instead of looking for flowers to give
it is best to watch flowers while discarding the many selves.
At the flower shop my words too are various like animated flowers.
When I turn the street corner at night my being is again
one thing,
just a being in distress, that can see everything.
Your exhausted necktie—
inside of its knot
something you do not realize is hiding.
Broken-down shoes unpolished for how-many days-
inside the worn-out leather heels
something that irritates you is hiding.
If you think it over well
you will come to realize what it is.
It is hiding inside the flame of a single match
burning your dead body.
Insects are crying with thin voices.
For what reason do they keep on going from the beginning
again
although it would be better for them to be quiet in a corner
of memory ?
Now I will climb a hill.
If only this summer will pass,
the cool wind come blowing again
and comfort my feelings, but . . .
Chasing after the sky, coming up to here,
this cannot be called a hill anymore.
It is as though from an even higher elevation
I dropped into the depths of the still higher blue sky,
the deepest blue sky.
This is exhilarating, even to me.
Both close and distant, was there ever such an evening sun
going down?
Look !
Out of the sky of four thousand days and nights,
just because we wanted the trembling tongue of one
small bird,
four thousand nights of silence and four thousand days
of counterlight
you and I killed by shooting.
Listen!
Out of all the cities of falling rain, smelting furnaces,
midsummer harbors, and coal mines,
just because we needed the tears of a single hungry child
four thousand clays of love and four thousand nights of
compassion
you and I killed by assassination.
Remember!
Just because we wanted the fear of one vagrant dog
who could see the things you and I couldn't see with our
eyes
and could hear the things you and I couldn't hear with our
ears,
four thousand nights of imagination and four thousand days
of chilling recollection
you and I killed by poison.
In order for a single poem to come
you and I have to kill beloved things.
This is the only way to bring back the dead to life.
You and I have to follow that way.
At five
my past was to yesterday
At seven
my past was to the age of warriors
At eleven
my past was to dinosaurs
At fourteen
my past was as the textbooks
At sixteen
I watched the infinity of the past with fear
At eighteen
I don't know what time is
I gather up pearls on a pavement.
I live inside a phantom forest;
upon notes of music scattered over the strings of my being.
I live in hollows of drops that trickle upon snow;
in damp ground of morning where liverwort opens.
I live upon a map of the past and future.
I have forgotten the color my eyes were yesterday.
But what things my eyes saw yesterday
my fingers realize
because what eyes saw was by hands
patted like touching the bark of a beech tree.
O I live upon sensations blown about by wind.
The time and also the place, not exact,
pass over my consciousness at certain moments.
Strangely clear
that scenery of the mind,
a thing awaking in a fathomless place,
a being always observing the thoughts of my self,
the impulse inside my self,
a view-point of the bird's eye,
my self that is not my self.
I throw them away
and then I begin to walk all over again.
And the world is in early spring.
Under the girdered expressway a milk-colored haze is
hanging,
the sunlight of morning shining into it aslant.
Where a powdering of frost halfway comes off the tops
of roofs
children of sunlight blow upon tiny horns of spring.
Heads of grey-green colored hills and
heads of buildings on this side stretch up billowingly.
Looking out on this scene of such joyful existence
now I will stop questioning the condition of "happiness."