| A priest all alone
taking a nap at midday- beyond the eaves of the abbot's chamber the deep blueness of the sky. |
As it becomes stormlike
in daytime, in the river bed on the rocks there are restless and confused crows that are crying out. |
| I stand as though
only I am existing in heaven and earth— at this solitariness Kannon, you are smiling. |
Coming stealthily,
who is it hitting the temple bell? It is late at night and t.me tor even the Buddha to go into dreaming. |
| In the Lord Buddha's
drowsy eyes the ancient country fields of Yamato Have their hazy existence. |
| You water spider
against the streaming current skating upstream— your vigorousness, oh, although it is a faint thing. |
The faintly glowing
color of the maples, when it fades away before the falling of snow, serenity in mountains. |
| This living creature,
each breath that I am taking, is befag observed by one climbing up a window, a praying mantis, alone. |
Awakened
from winter sleep a frog climbs up onto the top of leftover snow and stretches himself out flat. |
| The red-throated
chimney swallows, two of them, upon the rafters— and underneath, my mother who is going to die now. |
Those wild geese
do not pass over any more within the sky without limitation the scattered snow is falling. |
| Very close to death
the mother I watch beside— hush-hush—sounds from far rice ponds, frogs crying to heaven are being heard. |
The clouds of springtime
come together at one side around midday by the far-off water reeds the wild geese have settled down. |
| Being awakened
I was imagining that the wild grasses might be dropping down their seeds at about this time of night. |
The hush-hush
inside the falling of snow—- standing motionless, a horse, his eyes. Now he has blinked ! |
| Crawling on the grass,
you firefly of the morning, transient must be this existence of mine. Do not let me die, ever. |
Into spring mountains
I have come and am staying one person alone trying to hear the sound o leaves fallen, dried, bent over. |
|
a lacewing May fly is clinging to it — the sheer transparency of the wings, their mournfulness. |
| Under the plane trees
young women are passing by, upon their eyelids is a color tinged with blood. Summer has surely arrived. |
My eyes watching,
I too become desolate toward nightfall from the harvested rice field seeing stray grains being gathered. |
| On a mountain top
in springtime coldness priests keep going back and forth in black robes that are bulging and mufflers that are white. |
| With a happiness continuing all my life,
the day I began junior high school ! The shoe shop of that time is still here. I come to a sudden standstill. |
The past three mornings,
morning after morning self-ornamenting, the water-lily flower— this morning it has not opened. |
| When that beam of light
came passing over the sea I as a whiteness was revealed in the dark, and then I saw I was all alone. |
In the darkened fields
the very faintly burning lights of the houses— ah, they are more frail even than the glowing of fireflies. |
| How far
will that wild duck still go through evening waves swollen in the open sea where it struggles on alone? |
| How far
will that wild duck still go through evening waves swollen in the open sea where it struggles on alone? |
The beating heart of myself
within the grease of myself seems to be burning. And what can be the reason it is so cruelly thus ? |
| In my inner self
where it stands up piercing me the hollow cavern has in times without a wind the ultimate of darkness. |
Ever more and more profound
will be the doubt in my mind with which I must live for the white robe of a god was seen after it was stained. |
| With wings that will not ever
be folded a butterfly will be made to soar indefinitely in the white hours of continuation. |
With wings that will not ever
be folded a butterfly will be made to soar indefinitely in the white hours of continuation. |
| Within the blackened sea
of water where I now bathe each time that I sink I am being followed by a solitary drowned man. |
"Do not resemble me,
do not," I tell one I paint in a picture as a woman who is beautiful with an adulteress's smile. |
| Both water and the earth
are frozen, no sound is made in the cold night, inside just myself there is a lonely thing that does not freeze. |
Dividing the wheat,
the place where construction is planned has stakes pounded in— like into thick animal skin a needle being driven. |
| Because a tunnel
has a way for coming out, with what is simply a being happy there emerge both bus and white butterfly. |
As a landscape in the far distance
is how human life appears and in autumn wind upon the extended fields a black locomotive goes. |
| A magpie bird,
singing, is pointed out to me — moving the umbrella — the boat being turned with the oar — there, just ahead! |
Cast upon the ground
the shadow of my own self is being walked through while my back is carrying the brightness of the moon. |
| On the dawn-reddened
sky they are spreading out, the singing cranes, a thousand of the cranes, and each voice a distinct voice. |
Because the songbird
pauses while flying there is a ceaseless swaying of the willow's sheer branches and a fall of loosened snow. |
| As on this day
after I die also there will come again from young persimmon leaves a tapping sound of rain. |
Now at evening
light accumulates around a standing crane and it is only there shining continues without darkening. |
| The river's breadth
is narrowed by abundant water hyacinths too late for flowering but green and profoundly quiet. |
| Upon the water
time just does not exist as something realized— of the children, two of them, we are father and mother ! |
The same as a burning
is the air inside which I am doing my work. In the red pencil the core has softened. |