My hands touching it
feel as if they were touching Esmeralda’s white palm.
And along with Esmeralda, the monster
Quasimodo who delights in storms is hiding near some molding.
A just soul crammed into an ugly body,
a firm strength,
silently absorbing on his back
the words of those who wounded, those who whipped, those who would do wrong, those who despised, and not to say the least, those who were petty,
he ground himself to serve God,
O only you could give birth to that monster.
How many non-hunchbacked, non-deformed, more joyful, more daily Quasimodos
have been born since then
and nurtured on your breast full of solemn, yet protective motherly love, and gentle.
O Cathedral in the thrashing rain.
Baton swung down abruptly at the sudden
turn of the wind and rain that took a breath and has driven itself harder,
all the instruments of the heavens gone berserk,
the dance swirls around them.
O Cathedral, you who at such a moment keep ever more silent and soar,
Cathedral, you who watch motionless the houses of Paris suffering the storm,
please do not think me rude,
who, hands on your cornerstone,
has his hot cheek pressed on your skin,
it’s me, the drunken one.
It’s that Japanese.
Translated by Hiroaki Sato
HAGIWARA SAKUTARŌ
Hagiwara Sakutarō (1886–1942) is now generally accepted as the first truly “modern” Japanese poet, for both his use of the colloquial language and his open and direct presentation of his sometimes neurotic sensibility, a literary strategy seldom possible in the traditional forms of waka and haiku.
ON A TRIP (RYOJŌ, 1914)
Though I think I’d like to go to France
France is too far away;
I would at least put on a new jacket
and go on a carefree trip.
When the train takes a mountain path
I would lean on an aquamarine window
and think alone of happy things
on a May morning when eastern clouds gather
leaving myself to my heart with fresh young grass flaring.
BAMBOO (TAKE, 1915)
Something straight growing on the ground,
something sharp, blue, growing on the ground,
piercing the frozen winter,
in morning’s empty path where its green leaves glisten,
shedding tears,
shedding the tears,
now repentance over, from above its shoulders,
blurred bamboo roots spreading,
something sharp, blue, growing on the ground.
SICKLY FACE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GROUND (JIMEN NO SOKO NO BYŌKI, 1917)
At the bottom of the ground a face emerging,
a lonely invalid’s face emerging.
In the dark at the bottom of the ground,
soft vernal grass stalks beginning to flare,
rats’ nest beginning to flare,
and entangled with the nest,
innumerable hairs beginning to tremble,
time the winter solstice,
from the lonely sickly ground,
roots of thin blue bamboo beginning to grow,
beginning to grow,
and that, looking truly pathetic,
looking blurred,
looking truly, truly, pathetic.
In the dark at the bottom of the ground,
a lonely invalid’s face emerging.
THE ONE WHO’S IN LOVE WITH LOVE (KOI O KOISURU HITO, 1917)
I painted rouge on my lips,
and kissed the trunk of a new birch,
even if I were a handsome man,
on my chest are no breasts like rubber balls,
from my skin rises no fragrance of fine-textured powder,
I am a wizened man of ill fate,
ah, what a pitiable man,
in today’s balmy early summer field,
in a stand of glistening trees,
I slipped on my hands sky blue gloves,
put around my waist something like a corset,
smeared on my nape something like nape powder,
thus hushed assuming a coquettish pose,
as young girls do,
I cocked my head a little,
and kissed the trunk of a new birch,
I painted rosy rouge on my lips,
and clung to a tall tree of snowy white.
THE ARMY (GUNTAI, 1923)
impression of a passing army
This weighty machine
presses the ground down solidly;
the ground, powerfully trodden,
reacts
and raises swirls of dust.
Look at this giant-weight sturdy machine
passing through the daylight;
it’s a dark blue, greasy
fantastic, stubborn giant body
a gigantic group’s power machine
that presses the ground down solidly.
thud, thud, crash, crash
crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch.
Wherever this vicious machine goes
the landscape discolors
turns yellow,
the sun depresses in the sky
the will becomes heavily overwhelmed.
thud, thud, crash, crash
one, two, one, two.
O this weight-pressing
gigantic pitch black crowd
just as a wave pushes back and comes back
through the muddied flow of heavy oil
ranks of heated gun barrels pass
innumerable tired faces pass.
crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch
one, two, one, two.
Under the dark oppressive sky
a heavy machine of steel passes
innumerable dilated pupils pass;
the pupils, open in the heat,
rove vainly, powerlessly
in the shadow of the yellow landscape the terror.
Becomes fatigued
exhausted
dazzled.
one, two, one, two
mark time!
O these multitudinous pupils
above the road where dust hangs low
they see the sunlight of melancholy
see the white illusion, the city streets
feelings darkly incarcerated.
thud, thud, crunch, crunch
crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch.
Look at the dark blue, fantastically greasy
giant-weight sturdy machine
now moving through the daylight;
wherever this vicious machine tramples
the landscape discolors
the air turns yellow
the will becomes heavily overwhelmed.
thud, thud, crunch, crunch
thud, thump, crash, crash.
One, two, one. two.
THE CORPSE OF A CAT (NEKO NO SHITAI, CA. 1924)
to a woman I call Ula
In a spongelike landscape,
and moist, swollen with dampness.
Nowhere are humans and beasts visible,
and an oddly sad-looking waterwheel seems to be weeping.
Then too, from under a blurring willow,
a gentle person you are waiting for is visible, I say.
Her body wrapped in a light shawl,
dragging a beauteous, gaseous costume,
and roaming quietly like a spirit.
Ah Ula, lonely woman!
“You, you’re always late, aren’t you?”
We have no past, have no future,
then too, we’ve disappeared from actual things. . . .
Ula!
In this landscape that looks peculiar,
why don’t you bury the corpse of the muddy cat?
/> Translated by Hiroaki Sato
MIYAZAWA KENJI
Miyazawa Kenji (1896–1933) was a teacher in a poor rural area of northern Japan. A devout Buddhist, he mixed traditional religious vocabulary with his often daring verbal and psychological poetic experiments. Not properly appreciated during his brief lifetime, Miyazawa has since become a literary icon, for both his poetry and his children’s stories.
SPRING & ASURA (HARU TO SHURA, 1922)
(mental sketch modified)
Out of the gray steel of imagination
akebi vines entwine the clouds,
wild rose bush, humus marsh
everywhere, everywhere, such designs of arrogance
(when more busily than noon woodwind music amber fragments pour down)
how bitter, how blue is the anger!
At the bottom of the light in April’s atmospheric strata,
spitting, gnashing, pacing back and forth,
I am Asura incarnate
(the landscape sways in my tears)
Shattered clouds to the limit of visibility
in heaven’s sea of splendor
sacred crystalline winds sweep
spring’s row of Zypressen
absorbs ether, black,
at its dark feet
the snow ridge of T’ien-shan glitters
(waves of heat haze & white polarization)
yet the True Words are lost
the clouds, torn, fly through the sky.
Ah, at the bottom of the brilliant April,
gnashing, burning, going back and forth,
I am Asura incarnate
(chalcedonic clouds flow, where does he sing, that spring bird?)
The sun shimmers blue,
Asura and forest, one music,
and from heaven’s bowl that caves in and dazzles,
throngs of trees like calamites extend,
branches sadly proliferating
all landscapes twofold
treetops faint, and from them
a crow flashes up
(when the atmospheric strata become clearer & cypresses, hushed, rise in heaven)
Someone coming through the gold of grassland,
someone casually assuming a human form,
in rags & looking at me, a farmer,
does he really see me?
At the bottom of the sea of blinding atmospheric strata
(the sorrow blue blue and deep)
Zypressen sway gently,
the bird severs the blue sky again
(the True Words are not here, Asura’s tears fall on the earth)
As I breathe the sky anew
lungs contract faintly white
(body, scatter in the dust of the sky)
The top of a ginkgo tree glitters again
the Zypressen darker
sparks of the clouds pour down.
THE MORNING OF THE LAST FAREWELL (EIKOTSU NO ASA, 1922)
Before the day ends
you will be far away, my sister.
Outside, there’s sleet and it’s oddly bright.
(Please get me some rain-snow)
From the clouds, reddish, all the gloomier for it,
the sleet comes down thick and clumsy
(Please get me some rain-snow)
To get rain-snow for you
in these two chipped ceramic bowls
with blue water-shield designs
I flew out into this dark sleet
like a crooked bullet
(Please get me some rain-snow)
From dark clouds the color of bismuth
the sleet sinks thick and clumsy.
Ah, Toshiko,
now so close to death
you asked me
for a bowl of clean snow
to brighten me for the rest of my life.
Thank you, my brave sister,
I, too, will go by the straight way
(Please get me some rain-snow)
In your harsh, harsh fever, panting,
you asked me
for a last bowl of snow that fell from the sky,
the world called the galaxy, the sun, the atmospheric strata. . . .
. . . Between two slices of granite
sleet makes a solitary puddle.
I will stand on them, precariously,
and get for my gentle sister
her last food
from this lustrous pine branch
laden with transparent, cold drops
that maintain the pure white two-phase system of snow and water.
Today you will part with
the indigo designs of these bowls we’ve seen
since the time we grew up together.
Yes, today you will part with them.
Ah, in that closed sickroom,
behind the dark screen and mosquito net,
my brave sister,
you burn gently, pale.
No matter where I choose it
this snow is too white, everywhere.
From that terrifying, disturbed sky
this beautiful snow has come.
(When I’m reborn I’ll be born, the next time, so I won’t suffer only for myself like this)
On these two bowls of snow you will eat
I pray from my heart:
may this turn into the food of Tushita Heaven
and soon bring to you and all others
sacred nourishment.
That is my wish, and for that I will give all my happiness.
NOVEMBER 3RD (JŪICHIGATSU MIKKA, BETWEEN 1931 AND 1933)
neither yielding to rain
nor yielding to wind
yielding neither to
snow nor to summer heat
with a stout body
like that
without greed
never getting angry
always smiling quietly
eating one and a half pints of brown rice
and bean paste and a bit of
vegetables a day
in everything
not taking oneself
into account
looking listening understanding well
and not forgetting
living in the shadow of pine trees in a field
in a small
hut thatched with miscanthus
if in the east there’s a
sick child
going and nursing
him
if in the west there’s a tired mother
going and carrying
for her
bundles of rice
if in the south
there’s someone
dying
going
and saying
you don’t have to be
afraid
if in the north
there’s a quarrel
or a lawsuit
saying it’ s not worth it
stop it
in a drought
shedding tears
in a cold summer
pacing back and forth lost
called
a good-for-nothing
by everyone
neither praised
nor thought a pain
someone
like that
is what I want
to be
Translated by Hiroaki Sato
NISHIWAKI JUNZABURŌ
Nishiwaki Junzaburō (1894–1982) was a brilliant scholar and linguist. While he was living in Europe from 1922 to 1925, he met Ezra Pound and others and began writing in English, French, and Latin. At that time, he also read the work of Hagiwara Sakutarō and wrote about his excitement at discovering that authentic contemporary poetry could be written in Japanese. Nishiwaki’s first verse written in Japanese shows the influence of surrealism, and he continued to be interested in the contemporary European avant-garde, translating, among other works, T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.
SEVEN POEMS FROM AMBARVALIA (1933)
SHEPHERD IN CAPR
I (KAPURI NO MAKIBITO)
Even on a spring morning
I hear the noise of autumn
In my Sicilian pipe, retracing
The longings of thousands of years.
RAIN (AME)
The south wind brought a soft goddess,
moistened the bronze,
moistened the fountain,
moistened the wings of swallows and the golden hair,
moistened the tide,
moistened the sand,
moistened the fish.
It quietly moistened the temple, the glade, and the theater.
This serene procession of the soft goddess
Moistened my tongue.
HAND (TE)
The spirit’s artery snapped, God’s film snapped—
When I grope for the darkness of lips,
taking the hand of inspirited ether
that still dreams with the withered timber,
A honeysuckle reaches out
spreading fragrance on rock,
killing a forest.
A hand reaches for a bird’s neck and for the twilight of gems—
In this dreaming hand
lies Smyrna’s dream.—
A rosebush flaring.
EYE (ME)
July, when white waves pounce upon our heads,
We pass through a lovely town in the south.
A quiet garden lies asleep for travelers.
Roses, sand, and water. . . .
Heart misted by the roses.
The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series) Page 90
