Thereafter, so the story goes, the woman relaxed her fierce countenance and began to treat her stepson with the same diffidence she extended toward her own children.
Should you ever visit Tatsuta village, you will see that same stone Buddha sitting beside the road, fresh offerings spread before it.
A stone Buddha in
a spring breeze by bamboo groves
enjoys his rice cake
TWELVE
Last summer, at bamboo planting time, my wife gave birth to our daughter, whom we named Sato. Born in ignorance, we hoped she would grow in wisdom. On her birthday this year she whirled her arms and head for us and cried. We thought she was asking for a paper windmill, so I bought her one. She tried licking it, then sucking on it, then simply tossed it aside.
Her mind wanders from one thing to the next, never alighting very long on anything. One moment playing with a clay pot, in the next she shatters it. She examines a shōji screen, only to rip it open. When we sing her praises, her face lights up. Not a single dark cloud seems to have crossed her mind. She beams like clear moonlight, far more entertaining than the best stage act. When a passerby asks her to point out a dog or bird, she performs with her whole body, head to toe, poised like a butterfly on a grass blade, resting her wings.
She lives in a state of grace. The divine Buddha watches over her. On our annual evening honoring the dead, she comes crawling out as I light the candles on the family altar and ring the prayer bell. She folds her little hands, bending them like bracken shoots, and recites her prayer in a high, sweet voice.
I am old enough for frosty hair, the years add wrinkles to my face. I’ve not yet found Buddha’s grace myself I’ve wasted days and nights in empty busyness. It shames me to realize that my daughter, two years old, is closer to Buddhahood than I. But the moment I turn from the altar, I engage in bad karma, despising flies that crawl across my skin, swatting mosquitoes as they buzz about the table, or—worse—drinking wine, which is forbidden by the Buddha.
In the midst of my confession, moonlight falls over the gate like a cool breath. A group of dancing children suddenly begins to sing. My daughter drops her bowl and crawls out on the porch and joins her voice to the others, lifting her hands to the moon. Watching, I forget my advancing age and worldly ways. I daydream about a time when she’ll be old enough for long waves of hair, when we encourage her to dance. Surely she could outshine the music of two dozen heavenly maidens. Day in, day out, her legs never rest. By nightfall, she’s exhausted and sleeps deeply until the sun is high. While she sleeps, her mother cooks and cleans. Only then can her mother find a moment’s rest before she awakens again with a cry. Her mother carries her out to the yard to pee, then nurses her. Our daughter sucks with a smile, poking the breast happily. Her mother then forgets the weariness and pain of having carried her in the womb, she forgets the dirty diapers she washes every day, lost in the supreme joy of having such a child, more precious than jewels.
Nursing, mother counts
the fleabites on her daughter’s
small white body
These poems may serve as companion pieces following similar themes:
A child emerges
from deep in the willow shade
with a ghostly face
Though only a child,
he bows quietly before
New Year sacraments
Asked his age, the boy
in the bright new kimono
held up five fingers
Celebratory poem for a small child:
Even faster than
we had dreamed, you have outgrown
your first kimono
Tearfully, the child
begs me to pick the full moon
from the evening sky
In our poor house, the
only family treasures are
children’s fireside laughter
Placing the rice cakes
in a row, the child recites,
“Mine!” And “Mine!” And “Mine!”
My daughter struggles
to load her shoulders with
rice cakes for neighbors
The child claps his hands,
playing alone, happily,
under a festive tree
The boy disciplined
by being tied to a tree:
this breeze will cool him down
So ashamed, the child
tied to the tree cries loudly
to passing fireflies
Other poets have written about children.
Teitoku wrote:
Both my baby and
the new year struggled to
their feet this morning
Bashō wrote:
Without knowing love
for one’s children, there’s no truth
in cherry blossoms
And Shidō:
Bow to the image!
Mothers love—helping the child
slip into his shoes
Rakō wrote:
Please say it again
in your sweet little voice, say
“Flowers!” again!
Tōrai wrote:
Between window screens,
a tiny hand reaches out
to touch the spring rain
And Kisha:
Her every step
as she plants rice comes closer
to her crying child
Kikaku wrote:
My son has broken
a blossoming cherry branch.
How could I punish him?
One hundred days after the birth of my daughter, Kikaku also wrote:
As I bent to kiss
my baby’s tender cheek,
I heard the shrike cry
THIRTEEN
There was a woman, divorced by her husband, who returned to live with her parents while her young son remained with his father. She especially longed to visit her son on Children’s Day, but public scorn and humiliation prevented her. She wrote:
I fly my son’s flag
high, but I venture out only
as far as the gate
What a true and moving testimonial of a mother’s love! If anything can soften the heart of a stony man, it must be a mother’s love for her child. Had someone whispered this poem to her husband, he surely would have begged her to return.
Buddha teaches the essential oneness of humanity and nature. If this is true, the love of parent and child must be strongly felt among animals as well, for how could they differ? Onitsura wrote:
The human father
scared away the crow for the
sparrow’s children
Gomei wrote:
Warning his children
of danger, father deer calls
from a summer hill
And Tōyō wrote:
A child on his back,
old father frog goes out
to join the chorus
Wind in bamboo leaves
made sounds that brought father deer
bounding for home
From out in dark rain
I heard the plaintive crying
of a fawnless deer
The meadowlark sings,
circling the bushes where
her children hide
FOURTEEN
It is often said that the greatest pleasures result in the greatest misery. But why is it that my little child, who’s had no chance to savor even half the world’s pleasures—who should be green as new needles on the eternal pine—why should she be found on her deathbed, puffy with blisters raised by the despicable god of smallpox? How can I, her father, stand by and watch her fade away each day like a perfect flower suddenly ravaged by rain and mud?
Two or three days later, her blisters dried to hard scabs and fell off like dirt softened by melting snow. Encouraged, we made a tiny boat of straw and poured hot saké over it with a prayer and sent it floating downriver in hopes of placating the god of the pox. But our hope and efforts were useless and she grew
weaker day by day. Finally, at midsummer, as the morning glory flowers were closing, her eyes closed forever.
Her mother clutched her cold body and wailed. I knew her heartbreak but also knew that tears were useless, that water under the bridge never returns, that scattered flowers are gone forever. And yet nothing I could do would cut the bonds of human love.
This world of dew
is only the world of dew—
and yet . . . oh and yet . . .
As I wrote earlier, I’d left home to travel in the far north in early spring, but had gotten no farther than Zenkōji when something made me want to turn back home again. Hindsight suggests it was the compassion of Dōso-jin, ancient god of travelers, calling me home.
I made a small anthology of poems treating this and similar subjects.
Rakugo, on the death of a child:
I search the faces
of dancing children, looking
for one like my child’s
Shōhaku wrote this for a small boy who lost his mother:
On this beautiful
autumn evening he sits
alone at dinner
On the night his daughter was buried, Kikaku wrote:
The cranes cry in vain
late into night: no blanket
can thaw this cold world
Ensui wrote this on the first Girls’ Day festival following the death of his granddaughter:
Going out to store
away her dolls, I was met
by huge peach blossoms
Sampū wrote after his daughter died:
After the full moon,
I watched it wane, night by night:
no consolation
Raizan wrote of an adopted boy whose mother had died:
Nursing the handle
of his fan, he’s still thirsting
for his late mother
And after the death of his own child:
I must be crazy
not to be crazy in this
crazy spring nightmare
Following the death of his young son, Kaga-no-Chiyo wrote:
How far has he gone,
where has he wandered, chasing
after dragonflies?
These poems address the same experience. They were written by ancient noblemen and are given now as I remember them.
An anonymous poem:
A heartbreaking cry
from the child sleeping alone
long after midnight.
Perhaps in her dreams she longs
to find her mother beside her.
Tameie wrote:
Unwanted, the child
crawls after its mother—
which brings me to tears.
For he can neither rise up
nor face this cold world alone.
Kanesuke wrote:
A parent’s mind may
not be unenlightened and
one may nonetheless
lose one’s way completely
over love for one’s child.
In Mumonkan, the classic collection of Zen koans, it is written:
He comes without lifting a foot;
he teaches without moving his tongue.
However you lead the way, remember:
There is always one you follow.
No sooner received
than it is lost once again,
my little fan
The stag leaps the creek
swollen by spring rains, then looks
back toward his son
I accidentally
learned his name when I found his
fan in the temple
Portrait of a criminal waiting in ambush:
Like a murderer,
the thirsty mosquito hides
in the musky well
On a visit to Ōyama Shrine:
A huge wooden sword—
ten meters long—carried along
by a throng of kimonos!
A comical face—
presenting himself like a clown
with a broad, bright fan
FIFTEEN
Someone caught a small crow, the size of a lump of coal, and caged it in front of his house in Murasaki village. All night, I listened to the mother flying about, crying in the dark. Moved, I wrote:
In night’s blind darkness,
fruitlessly searching for
the baby she loves,
the mother crow continued
to cry until sunrise.
Written for the thief caught in his own village:
In falling spring rain,
a bird circles fresh bait:
in his own village
A sympathetic poem for innocent birds eating food put out in the shogun’s hunting grounds:
Two cranes, side by side,
forage on, unwittingly.
One will soon be dead
Risshi wrote:
As the doe nurses
her newborn fawn, the arrow
has eyes to find her
Even the most heartless hunter must be humbled by such cruelty and renounce the ways of this world.
SIXTEEN
My village lies so high on Kurohime Mountain that by the time last winter’s snows have melted in the summer sun, autumn frost has already begun. Trees imported from warmer regions undergo changes, as with a mandarin orange, grown to but half its normal size—like one I read about in a Chinese book.
The primrose should grow
nine distinct blossoms—but here,
only four or five
On the ancient battleground where, as the legend goes, Chinzei Hachirō Tametomo threw down his enemies like stones, I borrowed his words to write:
Listen, enemies
low as worms, hear the piercing
cry of the cuckoo!
On the deer’s tongue, the
cluster of flowering clover
rests so easily!
I remember a famous painting of an ancient Chinese sage standing on a rock, handing a scroll to a young man:
“I’ve waited for you
for a long time”—for your song,
my mountain cuckoo
The quiet life:
My home is quiet.
The cuckoo’s song is silenced
in my quiet home
Eluding the hands
of a man, the firefly
quickly disappears
“You can’t fool me!” cries
the little firefly as it
flits quickly away
SEVENTEEN
Ōritsu wrote recently to tell me that Seikeishi is gone, his voice silenced last winter.
What you do or don’t
say really doesn’t matter:
talking to dead trees
A wanderer rests
in green shade, giving his hat
a chance to breathe
“The honorable
Lord Toad, Marshland Overseer,
happy to meet you!”
That fat toad looks like
he just burped a huge cloud
filling the sky
Withering red leaves
fall so festively in
cool green summer shade
With each lightning flash,
each roll of thunder, rice and
the world grow richer
Seen in a flash
of lightning, the riverbed
looks utterly dead
Even on foggy
nights, the horse can avoid
the hole in the bridge
Helpless against this
autumn wind, the firefly
must crawl from my hand
Written one afternoon during a rest in a field:
Protecting the child
from the cold autumn wind,
the old scarecrow
On losing my traveling companion:
At sunset this fall
evening, I wrote on a wall:
“I’ve gone on ahead”
Mi
dsummer, visiting my daughter’s grave seventeen days after her death:
In soft pampas grass
I sit a long time before
saying my prayer
When the evening drum
begins, even the woodpecker
stops to listen
So studiously!
the old woodpecker assays
my hermitage
In a temple storehouse:
Smiling serenely,
the Buddha gently points to
a little stinkworm
Like an acrobat
balanced very proudly on
one leg: the wild goose
A mountain temple—
hearing the stag’s piercing cry
from the balcony
The high distant cry
of the stag tells the hunter
how to blow his horn
Chattering, they return
from the mountains empty-handed,
the mushroom pickers
Visiting my daughter’s grave on July 25th, one month after her death:
The red flower
you always wanted to pick—
now this autumn wind
A few blossoms fall
from the deer’s munching mouth:
flowering clover
The Spring of My Life Page 4
