The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa

by Chika Sagawa

I was abandoned

  SLEEPING

  When the wind where her hair unravels runs down the thicket, it becomes a flame.

  She brings with her an unbecoming golden ring.

  Turning and turning it, she tosses it out into the air.

  Much like plants, people hoped to grasp, conquer, and spring back against all physical impediments with their entire bodies.

  But at the temple the bell does not ring.

  For their blue veins were bare, and their backs were the night.

  I briefly watched the garden wither at the far end of the sky.

  The tree that pulls away from its leaves, like memories discarded. That thicket is already gone.

  The day is long; decaying lives fill the sunken earth with deep crimson.

  And then autumn rises from our feet.

  THE MAD HOUSE

  A bicycle spins.

  Along a breezy path in the field.

  Only the insides of the rubber wheels exhaust the earth.

  He will soon arrive in Baghdad.

  It is quite bustling there.

  Soldiers of the Red Army, curly-haired artists, pale-skinned Ryazan women, the spiral staircase of the cabaret.

  The piano makes tinny sounds.

  People standing on a mere footprint’s worth of dirt are sharpened crystals. One wrong step leads to death. The infinite propagation of the sun.

  At the source of the disease the plants dry up, and the clouds tearing through the deteriorated city streets.

  Just as the past is nothing for him but an arrangement of trees, it is also cold like ash.

  The goose feathers at the entrance, the inverted shadow.

  I am alive. I thought, I am alive.

  SHAPES OF CLOUDS

  Pushing through an arch of silver waves,

  A procession of people pass through.

  Broken-down memories sparkle

  Above the rocks, the trees, and the stars.

  A wrinkled curtain by the window

  Is gathered, then torn apart.

  A single garland swaying

  In the radiant light made by the city of marble.

  Every day, fingertips thin like leaves

  Are drawing maps.

  WIND

  Monotonous words, like a broken gramophone.

  The grass opens its bright green mouth and laughs hysterically.

  And in that moment the skirts sway quietly.

  The road dries up white

  And they drag their tired feet

  To where the hair flows, red like wolfberries.

  DAY OF SNOW

  Butterflies flutter daily.

  Tearing off the flower patterns from windows

  They collect upon the parasol

  Spread across your chest.

  Reflected in white as they pass by

  I chase them and chase them

  But the road is long.

  THE DAY THE BELL TOLLS

  All day

  I hear the fallen, trampled leaves groaning.

  Such is the afternoon of life

  It reports the time that has already passed.

  As when the sound of the bell

  Shaves away the flesh of trees

  Piece by piece

  Because time no longer exists there.

  THE CITY POSSESSED

  To arouse, anticipate, and hope for

  A building, grand with memories

  Atop every other ruined thing.

  Beauty that constructs our notions in vain

  Is at the limits of time—

  Their sorrows will never be

  Spoken of in their entirety.

  However, the ground is of linoleum in full bloom.

  A herd of sheep devours the fields and edges of trees

  While heavily moving forward

  They get pushed up onto the street, falter, and

  Continue this exercise.

  In winter, all things are

  Nothing more than the projection of spirits.

  The embracing of spirits,

  Tangled like wet yarn.

  WAVES

  The sailors are laughing.

  With their teeth bared,

  Like barrel organs

  Thrashing in pain all over the place.

  Unflaggingly

  They press the bellows with their entire bodies

  While laughter spreads from shore to shore.

  The laughter we have today

  Becomes captive to the eternal

  And silence only grows deeper still.

  For the tongue is simple, like a pair of clappers.

  And now, the people

  Simply open their mouths

  As when yawning.

  LIKE A CLOUD

  Insects pierce green through the orchard

  Crawl the undersides of leaves

  Ceaselessly multiplying.

  Mucus expelled from nostrils

  Seems like blue mist falling.

  At times, they

  Without a sound flutter and vanish into the sky.

  The ladies, always with bleary eyes

  Gather the unripe fruit.

  The sky has countless scars.

  Hanging like elbows.

  And then I see

  The orchard cleaving from the center.

  The skin of the earth emerges there, burning like a cloud.

  PLEASE COVER ME WITH DIRT EVERY YEAR

  Listlessly walking silently,

  Clinging to the honeysuckle on the hedge

  Crouched beside the road

  O, decrepit old winter—

  The hair on your head has dried

  And those who walked upon it

  Have died too, along with their memories.

  TO AWAKEN

  Spring descends into the center of our dreams

  Scattering roses.

  Night burns the bear’s pitch black fur

  Extends its ruthlessly long tongue

  And then the flame, crawling about the earth—

  From the singing voice placed

  Between lifeless lips

  —Soon the celestial flower bouquet

  Will open.

  TO THE VAST BLOOMING SKY

  They are the eyes of everyone.

  Are they not the white resonating words.

  I’ll remove my hat and throw them in.

  As the sky and ocean conceal countless flower petals.

  One day, at last, blue fish and rose-colored birds will burst through my head.

  The things I’ve lost are never to return.

  GATE OF SNOW

  People’s outdated beliefs are piled up around that house.

  —Already pale, like gravestones.

  Cool in summer, warm in winter.

  For a moment I thought flowers had bloomed

  But it was just a flock of aging snow.

  SIMPLE SCENERY

  Cloud-buildings that tremble and sway

  Like hopeless drunkards.

  I envy the sun that lives in that old garden

  Running across the sky.

  O—two fighting bulls!

  Under your horns, sunlight flows like raging blood.

  There, some people wear gilded clothing

  And some are blue like the wind.

  That territory is, at times,

  Just a grave for simple spirits.

  Because the daytime is vacant,

  The flower petals have al
ready wilted.

  And then it is night.

  People are in their homes.

  Trembling from bewilderment and fear

  The darkness that blows in from the infinite.

  And again the seeds sparkle all over the world.

  Just as the poet sprinkles poems.

  SPRING

  Flax flowers smell of melting haze.

  The violet wisps of smoke are angry feathers.

  They fill the fountain of green.

  You, the Queen of May,

  Will soon arrive.

  DANCE HALL

  With all of my ears

  I listen

  As they go back and forth

  Their noisy dance steps on the floor

  Like mist falling spore-like from the sky

  I saw it

  The transformation of the flower garden

  DARK SUMMER

  There was a sycamore outside the window. There was an elm. I watch the air slowly spiral, in the shade of the leaves above my head. They look like they might fall at any moment. They get tangled up like yarn, and the air with thin wings floats through the lace curtains. Like green trimming. Because the light shining through between the black figures collides with the flower petals and thin stems, the carpet of grass is drenched in light, sparkling. That light, as if it had forgotten to get up again, reflects only slightly into the interior. Thus the room was dark and dingy. Everything loses its gravitational center and flees from the interior to the bright outdoors. There, they spin at great speeds. I feel myself gradually getting lighter. My weight was on the tree in the garden. I wonder if that powder on the leaves is dust. The leaves are blown and swaying in the wind, as if unable to withstand their weight on earth. Rubbing the palms of their hands together.

  People always pass under the dark damp thicket. Wordlessly, with knees bent, hunched over awkwardly. The streets are silent and the dogs meander along the hedge. The houses have flung open their doors and rooted themselves to the ground. The slate sweats like the black sun in the afternoon. I observe these things absentmindedly. I can’t stand this anxiety. Because they are transforming into something completely foreign to me. And they are desperately attached to the bottom of the sky, as if troubled by bad dreams. Only the trees grow by stealing their vitality. The city that has already left me. While I gaze outside, it seems that something invisible lives in my flesh, violating me from the edges, little by little. I turn back again and again. Though my hand is raised, my fingers grasp the edges of my clothes and are convulsing slightly. What is it that presses down on my head and weighs on me so. Somewhere a crane is rising and falling. Fully loaded with leaves.

  When I awakened, the leaves had increased at an incredible rate. They were spilling over. A newspaper was tossed in through the window. I was surprised to see it printed in blue. I am unable to read it. It felt rough to the touch. My eyes always go bad during this season. They get bloodshot, my eyelids swell up. The train commute of my girlhood. The thicket, the woods between the cliffs, enter the train car. The bright green flame that burns its image on both of the glass windows dyes our hands and eyeballs bright blue. The passengers’ faces all crumble at once. Divided into dark parts and light parts, they are left smeared on the windows. Leaning against a wall of grass, we leave our textbooks open on our laps and do nothing. I spit out the window. I am now standing and sitting, just like I had done back then. The ophthalmologist peered into my inflamed eye from above a single layer of skin. Scalpel and scissors. Shot of cocaine. I feel the pleasure of these things stimulating me from afar. I am sure that the doctor will remove only the blue part from my retina. Then I will be able to greet people with vigor and walk straight down the street.

  I hear a cane tapping the floorboards one by one. There is a tedious loneliness here, ravaged like an abandoned house. It must be a blind person ascending the stairs. This old house makes creaking sounds, like loose floorboards. The old man who appears to enjoy his solitude. That face, always faintly smiling. There was neither despair nor servility there. And then, I saw it yesterday. The man gesturing with his hands as if teaching something by the light of the window. (The blind are always searching for something.) There were countless cabbage worms atop his hands that were like the veins of a leaf. In that moment, the young leaves swaying in the glass were beautiful.

  The June sky is immobile. Covered by the shadow of plants grown rampant to the point of depression. The breathing of these creatures crawls up out of the ravine like smoke and flows towards the hill. Pushing through the thicket, it seems there is yet another surface of the earth. Every morning the green surges forward like a flood, overflowing onto the balcony. It carries the blue of the ocean and the smell of grass, and I choke on it. Every time the wind blows, turning over leaves, they rustle like waves. The orchard is awash with apple flowers. Brightly they bloom, drawing boundaries in the sky.

  I knew a young boy named Midori. He seemed frail, like the apricot flowers extending their branches from the garden to the roadside. Because he had just come out of the isolation ward. The navy blue smell of his new clothes stings my eyes. Suddenly it grazed my eyes. He is running into the dim orchard. Screaming. It sent animal-like reverberations everywhere. Bare white feet floating in space. In the end the boy never came back.

  CONSTELLATION

  From a sky wet with dew

  From the wide green plains

  Awakening

  Light is treading above a soft wall

  Just barely supported by the dark air of night

  As when I was dancing between sleep and death

  Everything upon the earth is a shadow of life

  And under that grass, our fingers opened like a corolla

  A wordless honor And this madness thrown against the glamorous sky

  And now, like rocks, they press upon my head.

  ANCIENT FLOWERS

  Having once bloomed in the ocean breast

  But now mostly faded in color

  Just as the years arrive from somewhere

  And quietly go to ruin

  They are already invisible

  Young girls collect with their fingertips the lips of the waves

  Sounding a hollow ring

  ONE OTHER THING

  A thicket of asparagus

  Dives into the dirty afternoon sun

  Their stems cut off by glass

  Blue blood streams down the window

  And on the other side

  Is the sound of a fern unfurling

  BACKSIDE

  Night eats color

  Flower bouquets lose their fake ornaments.

  Day falls into the leaves like sparkling fish

  And writhes like the lowly mud

  The shapeless dreams and trees

  Nurtured outside this shriveled, deridable despair

  And the space that was chopped down

  Tickles the weeds by its feet.

  Fingers stained with cigarette tar

  Caress the writhing darkness.

  And the people move forward.

  BLEMISH ON THE GRAPE

  In the afternoon rocking chair, cloud-covered eyes gaze at the black specks darting through the air.

  A branch loaded with leaves rises solemnly to the sky, leaving behind teeth marks.

  Now, as ever, are the stemless flowers which once grazed the darkness of my eyelids burying the deformed streets of the northern lands.

  The pure thoughts and shadows which autumn crushes.

  My flesh, while trampling quietly upon them in the corner of the yard, watches over the whereabouts of that which is destroyed.

  As wings circling under the trees turn into their helpless coffin.

  The juice of the crushed grapes
>
  Stain the sky, and darkness is dampened by the air.

  Lingering in the pallid dusk

  The people hang their heavy hearts to dry.

  SNOW LINE

  Faded, worn-down time scatters into the air as ardent seeds. Leap over silent forms, and wash away the artificial rouge of technique from the lips, which bleed blooming flowers every time you traverse the earth!

  Having discarded yesterday’s wind, the branch that firmly shakes the hand overflowing with promises changes passion and hope into powerless figures. The accumulation of thought left behind for those who have lost their steps to the relentless attack of those corpses. The glory filling the heart of the traveler crossing this parched sandbank is already lost, and an unfamiliar shard of snow melts into the night. What is it that keeps dragging me into the endgame.

  PROMENADE

  Seasons change their gloves

  The three o’clock

  Trace of sun

  Of flower petals that bury the pavement

  A black and white screen

  Eyes are covered by clouds

  Evening sets on some promiseless day.

  CONVERSATION

  —The hand of God shall be raised for the sake of the seasons buried under a heavy rhythm. The rail line crawling out of the undulating waves bloom with salt flowers. Yearning for the biorhythms of all things, the antique keyboard with its dusty fingers awaits a sun-ripened moment.