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The Spring of My Life

Page 3

by Kobayashi Issa


  As I passed through the Shirakawa Barrier, I realized that there was a very good chance I would never again see my home. When a rooster called from a rooftop, I wondered whether he called for me to stop and turn back. A wind over the fields also seemed to beckon me back.

  I sat down under a tree to rest my weary legs, and, thinking of the road I’d already traveled, my Kashi-wabara village seemed somewhere over the mountains nestled in clouds. Homesick already, I wrote:

  No matter how hard

  I try, I can’t stop thinking

  of my old village

  The same thoughts written as tanka:

  Memory returns

  to those ancient misty trails

  around my village—

  but neither flowers nor love

  bloom there—only my sadness.

  So very gently

  it won’t even disturb

  the butterfly,

  this soft spring wind wanders

  over deep fields of new wheat.

  On being idle:

  Mosquito larvae

  are idle—like me today,

  like me tomorrow

  Life is brief, desire infinite:

  So many breezes

  wander through my summer room:

  but never enough

  Mornings, the farmer

  studies his green rice fields:

  sown with devotion

  I’ve had this in mind for a long time, trying to find a way to say it:

  Even the flies

  in the village of my birth

  draw blood with each bite

  Here as in heaven

  the lotus blooms, growing tall.

  But here, much smaller

  A summer’s estate:

  my little grass mat spread out

  in the piney shade

  Kijō wrote this song for children:

  The new dragonfly

  circles three times before

  it settles in our room

  The firefly departs

  so quickly, so breathlessly

  it leaves its light behind

  The old woman

  wiped her nose on the blossom

  of a moonflower

  Calligraphy on

  a hot summer day: that boy

  wrote on his face

  Flitting here and there

  a huge firefly dances

  across the moor

  After enjoying a bath in Nyoi Hot Springs in Tanaka village:

  Lying here looking

  at the mountains I just crossed,

  I’m even hotter

  When I bowed before

  the Buddha, hungry mosquitoes

  swarmed from his shadow

  If you really must

  leap, my little fleas, why not

  leap on the lotus?

  My home is so poor

  even the resident flies

  keep their family small

  That cormorant’s my

  favorite who surfaces

  with an empty beak

  A cicada, loud

  in the pine—will noontime heat

  never arrive?

  How fortunate! I’m not

  punished for dozing behind

  the mosquito net

  The free cormorant

  scurries back to the boat when

  her new baby cries

  FIVE

  Everyone kept telling me about remarkably beautiful peonies blooming at the home of my friend Nabuchi. People traveled miles to see them. So I stopped along my way.

  Thirty-foot beds were laid under a large canopy, each packed tightly with blossoming white, red, and purple flowers—and more—an especially startling one that was rich black, and another, a strange yellow. Then, as I studied these two more closely, I began to see them as dry and stiff, unlike the vibrant peonies around them. They looked like made-up corpses among beautiful girls.

  Of course, Nabuchi made them from paper and tied them to living flowers as a joke for his friends, a truly witty one at that, and without consequence. He asked no fee for viewing his flowers and even provided saké and tea. Laughing about his joke, I wrote:

  Little scraps of paper

  planted among the leaves:

  peony faces

  SIX

  Children hereabouts play a game wherein they bury a live frog and cover its grave with plantain leaves while they sing:

  Hey, hey, the toad is dead,

  the toad is dead.

  Let’s all bury it

  under the plantain leaves!

  Under the plantain leaves!

  As it happens, an ancient Chinese botanical book, the Honzō kōmoku, refers to plantain as “toad’s skin,” which in this province somehow became “toad’s leaf.” The game, sprung from the correspondence between Japanese and Chinese common names, must have conveyed some message in earlier times.

  Spindly saxifrage

  bends above the toad’s grave

  and its white tears fall

  In Chinese mythology, a toad taught a famous hermit how to fly. In Japan, we often credit frogs with having fought bravely at Ten’nōji. But that too is ancient mythology. Today, the toad’s apparently have made peace with humanity and now live comfortably m the world. If I, for example, should roll out my mat on the ground some summer evening and cry, “Come out, Happy One,6 come out!”—out of the garden comes a fat toad to sit with me in the cool evening air. That’s the soul of a poet! And the greatest honor bestowed upon a toad was when, as written by Chōshōshi, a toad was chosen to judge the Insect Poetry Competition.

  Sitting serenely,

  a plump toad enjoys viewing

  the mountain horizon

  Kikaku wrote:

  The oh-so-heavy

  toad crept out to meet the light-

  hearted bush warbler

  And Kyokusui wrote:

  You’ve fallen silent,

  my toad. Is it all the words

  that bloat you so?

  Beginning to rain—

  the old toad wipes his brow

  with the back of his hand

  When farmers discuss

  rice fields, each thinks his own

  is the very best

  The mosquito flew

  into a woman’s bedroom

  and died there in flames7

  Mimicking cormorants,

  children dive more cleverly

  than real cormorants

  Lying in hammocks,

  we speak so solemnly of

  distant thunder, distant rain

  While I was away,

  I left the mosquito net

  hanging lazily

  A flowing freshet—

  how the old woodcutter prayed,

  deep in the mountains

  Searching all this world,

  there is no perfect dewdrop

  even on the lotus

  From high in a tree

  the cicada cries after

  a wandering puppy

  May 28: They say it has rained annually on this day ever since 1193, when the Soga brothers avenged their father’s murder at the cost of their own lives. They say the rain commemorates the tears of Tora, wife of one of the brothers.

  Ignoring Tora’s

  copious tears, I got soaked,

  drenched to the bone

  SEVEN

  In Susaka Township in Shinano Province, a certain Dr. Nakamura, with capricious nastiness, killed a pair of snakes as they were mating. Late that night he was so overcome with searing pain in his penis that it rotted and fell off and he died.

  The doctor’s son, Santetsu, followed in his father’s profession. He was a big man with an enormous mushroom-shaped penis. On his wedding night, however, he was dismayed to find it hanging useless, soft and thin as a candlewick. Overcome with shame, he sought other women, as many as a hundred, hoping to make it with them in order to recover, but always with the same embarrassing result, until he eventually sought refuge in s
eclusion.

  Until I heard this story, I’d never been interested in tales of the supernatural, thinking them no more than regional folktales popularized in old anthologies. But this story prompted me to consider the vengeance of snakes and how the family suffered in turn.

  All sentient beings are given life, even fleas and lice, and life is equally dear to each. It is bad enough to kill, but to kill them while they are in the act of procreation is truly terrible.

  Imprisoned, the fish

  in its tub finds such delight

  in fresh cold water

  Fly into the mist!

  Vanish quickly, my bird! You

  are finally free

  Ōemaru wrote:

  As the mosquito

  at equinox sucks my blood,

  I sit like Buddha

  Mitsutoshi’s tanka:

  In its final throes,

  the dying carp spins, splashing

  water with its fins.

  Likewise people waste their lives

  in useless activities.

  Toshiyori wrote:

  Lured by the branches

  set out to trap them, fish thrash

  helplessly about.

  Likewise people are enticed

  by the lures of ignorance.

  Written on Mount Asama:

  A lone bindweed root

  holds on for dear life to lava

  on the mountainside

  Seeing off a student of haiku:

  Even prickly shrubs

  will do—if you feel a breeze

  pass gently through

  Checking stations at mountain passes were established in ancient times to protect travelers, but now they contribute mostly misery:

  The gatekeepers burn

  moxa for travelers’ legs

  under blooming plum

  Hearing our voices,

  the doe moves quickly to stand

  beside her fawn

  Summer’s first firefly,

  winging about, ignoring

  temptation’s sweet call

  This slightly bent

  lotus stem—appropriate

  symbol of our world

  The darkness beneath

  the canopy of leaves belongs

  to listless neighbors

  Written beside a large pond:

  A single leap—from

  waterweed blossom to

  that cloud in heaven

  I heard about a fellow in a village in Echigo Province who hesitated before offering a night’s lodging to the high priest Shinran:

  In Kakikazi,

  even the mountain cuckoo

  stutters nervously

  Life in the vast city of Edo:

  A dime-sized patch of grass

  earns just that much of a breeze:

  sweltering weather

  For two yen I bought

  enough water to dampen

  my thirsty plant

  At Kogane-ga-hara:

  The mare’s vigilance:

  watchful while her foal drinks

  deeply from the spring

  Those clouds form grandly

  high in the sky, but owe it

  all to passing winds

  Floating together

  downriver: the antiplague

  sacrament and the flea

  At Morin Temple I heard about a badger who metamorphosed into a tea kettle:

  Here long ago

  a tea kettle flew off, light

  as a butterfly

  When the mosquito

  in cherry grove bit me,

  I cursed even the blooms

  This ant trail must have

  begun somewhere in the clouds

  in highest heaven

  EIGHT

  While visiting the Forest of the Mountain God in Rokugawa village in the Takai area, I picked three small chestnuts, which I eventually planted in the back corner of my garden. One sprouted, lifting up its green head in spring, happy in warm sunlight.

  Shortly thereafter, my neighbor on the east remodeled his house, cutting off all the sunlight and moonlight on my chestnut, cutting off even the falling rain and dew. That year it grew little.

  All winter, he shoveled the snow from his roof, piling it deep around the building until it looked as if Great White Mountain had been planted there overnight. The narrow pathway on which they carried firewood and water over the summit was steep as the stone steps ascending Atago Mountain. Toward the end of winter, the first happy signs of spring began to appear as green buds spotted the fields, and trees began to blossom. Still the great snowpile remained, deadly white and cold.

  Following custom, on April 8th, I prepared to warn away spring woodworms with a poem when a warbler began singing noisily and persistently in the garden. I went out to search for my little chestnut tree buried for months under snow, only to find its broken trunk. Had this tree been human, I’d have sent its remains up in smoke, but it wasn’t long before the stump sent out a few small leaves, and by the end of the year it had regained its former height.

  Again that winter—and every winter—it was crushed pitilessly by heavy snow. This has happened through seven winters. This unfortunate tree can neither blossom and fruit nor quite die. Its life is a perpetual struggle to survive at a foot in height. Hardly a life for a tree.

  And yet my own life closely resembles that of my tree. The firstborn, the first blossom in our family tree, I have been pushed aside to survive among late-blooming weeds, suckled by harsh winds blowing down Stepmother Mountain. I cannot recall a single day when I could freely enjoy life under a wide sky. I don’t know how such a thin thread of life could endure fifty-seven long years. Forgive me, my chestnut tree!—I never intended, when I planted you in my garden, for you to share in my own unhappy fate!

  One surviving pink,

  under shady trees called

  Mother Trees, helpless!

  Buddha taught that all events have karmic sources. If so, my suffering cannot be without foundation. I must have brought it on myself:

  Even this magnolia,

  merely hanging night and day

  high over my head:

  in springtime it will offer

  many beautiful flowers.

  Other poems on this theme include Sōkan’s

  All alone, the step-

  child naps on a thin mattress

  of woven grasses

  Seishō wrote:

  Sent out to sweep snow

  from bamboo leaves, is that wind

  a stepchild also?

  Kōsetsu wrote:

  I’d love to slap that

  fly on the beautiful face

  of my young stepchild

  And Mitatsu:

  All night mosquito

  bites multiply the tears

  of the stepchild

  In an uncompleted linked verse, Bashō hosted8 in 1687:

  A well-wrought petition saved

  one from punishment long ago

  [TOCHI]

  Thus did a stepmother

  gain a reputation for

  courageous kindness

  [RANSETSU]

  From another, written by Shoshun and Mitatsu, in the 1691 anthology Gion Shūi:

  The servant leaves to bury

  the bodiless head in secret

  The stepmother cries

  through the cold, rainy night

  over her dark crime

  From among five linked verses Bashō left in the north country:

  Stained by his doings,

  he stains the blades of grasses

  with bloody business

  And Furyū added:

  His stepmother robbed

  him of his rightful life—so

  cut by treachery!

  NINE

  Once there was a small girl, a stepchild who was not permitted to eat from a clay jar from which her stepsiblings helped themselves to rice balls whenever they fancied. When one day she heard a warbler calling near her window
, she wrote a tanka:

  Little bush warbler,

  what makes you cry out so long?

  Do you call for milk,

  enough rice from a clay jar,

  or is your mother gone?

  She was the daughter of Lord Tsurayuki.

  TEN

  I spent my time alone when I was small. I avoided the village children because they teased me. They used to sing:

  Everyone knows the motherless boy;

  he stands alone in the door,

  chewing his thumb from hunger

  I sought refuge near the woodpile out back, pitiable, hiding in dark corners, so miserable that, when only six years old, I wrote:

  My little sparrows,

  you too are now motherless—

  come play with me!

  ELEVEN

  Long ago in Yamato, in Tatsuta village, there lived a particularly cruel woman. Having refused to feed her stepson for ten days, she told him as he was about to die of hunger, “Take this bowl of rice and offer it to the stone roadside Buddha. If he eats, you may also.” The boy followed the instructions. But as he sat to pray beside the stone Buddha, it suddenly opened its huge mouth and gobbled the rice almost as if it were the starving child.

 

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