by Chika Sagawa
I think that “Nocturne” excerpted from The Wooden Pegasus is a strong poem.
In terms of learning more about postwar British poetry, the publication of this collection by this female poet, translated by Kitamura Tsuneo, is a truly wonderful event.
BOUQUET OF FOG
Today was a cold day. The sky was on the brink of snowing. Your lovely poetry collection, Flowers of Fog, landed in my hands, still wet from doing the laundry. As I warm my frozen fingers, each of your poems radiates its heat towards me.
What a pure and beautiful poetry collection, bursting with honesty and sparkling with rich emotion. I imagine a single young shoot growing straight up out of the snow—it is fitting for you who birthed this refined esprit and wisdom that flickers from the May sky in the Hokuriku region, bursting with multitudes of violet flowers upon withered branches. And I think about how the fruits of your heart, immune from any distortion, cast such blissful shadows across the earth. I am not familiar with the sound of the ocean nor with the color of the sky that always provide your musical accompaniment, but it has been a long time since I have recalled the breath-stopping days of snowstorm in my native Northern lands, or the streets lit by the white-light of the snow. With the cold air covering your heart like feathers, I wonder what kinds of shadows the Alps make in your eyes, or what kinds of sharp lights bring you to a shiver. Your poems have such naïve lines and vivid colors that are impossible to consider apart from this context.
I long to visit you in person. And to converse about some of my favorite memories—of horse-drawn sleigh bells, rubber boots, the snow piling up on rooftops, and those days when the mountains appear so close. This would allow me to also enjoy inhabiting the very landscape that raised you.
We own certain things—such as moments that are not to be lost. The poetry collection Flowers of Fog is, for us as well as for you, a beautiful memorial tree. I believe you will go over and beyond it. I believe that henceforth, too, you will create invisible, large shapes that are full of the girl-like curiosity and passion that is in Flowers of Fog.
Outside the winter is very cold, but I feel the warmth in people’s hearts. Is it snowing in Takaoka. I send you my sincerest wishes for a grand publication event for Flowers of Fog, surrounded by female poets.
LIKE FAIRY TALES
From an early age I dreamed a lot of dreams. As soon as I woke up, I would carefully count them and set them aside while I washed my face and combed my hair, so that I could try to hold on to these illusions. Around then the stories I told were all things I had dreamt, and my friends would laugh and say, you’re talking about your dreams again. I remember walking to school while describing a new dream about seeing a snowy road without a single footstep on it. It seems I had quite a lot of dreams every night.
What in reality was my very dull sense of seeing and hearing turned quite vivid in my dreams—something else altogether—playing tricks and working in various ways. It’s strange how the colors were always so vivid. Some dreams were in sepia like old photographs, while in some dreams the ocean was green. Sometimes as I closed my eyes at night I would wish for things—to continue the previous night’s dream, to hear that music one more time, or to go to Europe. In those childhood years when dreams are so important, my actual lived life was so full of loss, and little things to be sad about. That must be why, just as most people were going to sleep, my heart would awaken and make up dreams—I must have wanted to love and play like this, in the most natural way. And I alone lived, laughed, and fantasized within that dream space, trying to prevent myself from taking even a single step out.
I made my way through the daytime in a haze, but when evening came, these wonderfully detailed spirits flooded my empty head and filled up all the spaces. In my dreams, the dead never aged, broken objects had shapes, and there were no gaps in either time or space. It is a delightful thing to have everything moving forward in the present.
Come morning, it would feel like there were too many things that I should not let escape.
Nowadays I do not dream much. Even when I do, they are forgotten quickly. It is not because I am tired, but because there are no longer any friends to report my dreams to, and not only that, but my reality has all turned to dreams now, too.
WHEN PASSING BETWEEN TREES
Wearing glasses was not for the purpose of seeing things more clearly. That is to say, if what I see is limited by the width of my face, I might misperceive only that which appears before me, the sparks of the phenomenon itself often distracting me before I learn just how the thing spreads out or permeates. To see is not the same as knowing the result; it is for the purpose of reaching the end of one part of the phenomenon. Such are my thoughts as I walk through the wheat field. The wheat grows vigorously like a victor, shining in white rows against the black earth. I wonder if the sun in May isn’t a little too bright for the Japanese poets of today. They speak only of dreams and illusions, failing to harmonize with this all-too-French air. What relationship could there be between their imagery and the row of trees on the other side? The negligence of having imported only the world of Leica into poetry only makes us a little dizzy—neither their pastry-like sweetness nor their enumerated language could be seen as having the freshness of the young leaves on the zelkova trees by the side of the path I walk. They lose themselves only when imitating others, and when that figure has been chipped away at, are quite tired. There is a clear beauty in the hazy scenery when I have removed my glasses, and there is also a hazy goodness in what I see clearly when my glasses are on. But to think that everyone must gaze into a single mirror and distinguish black from white is foolish. It is not so much about searching for boundaries, but rather the precise snapping together of the infinite allusions on either side of that single line, with the cross-sections of a leaping field of vision. And yet, the highs and lows of artistic rhythm are determined by whether that field of vision is near or far. I believe poetry is the study of language. Unlike spoken language, it is a language of the heart, not visible from the surface. It is the filling of the air with words selected out of deep contemplation. Not a gathering of the meanings of words spoken to be spoken, but an attempt to say something, or to reflect something. Very sparse and most strict, it is a skillfulness right on the brink of burning out like a flame. It can mean to say one real thing within a long conversation, or to go chasing after something from behind.
I step on a still-lit cigarette butt. Someone has already gone ahead of me. His failure, and her error, lay in the finding of something man-made in the discontinuities of this endless nature. As I walk into the woods, I become aware of the roaring wind. I find it hard to believe that Kashiwagi Shunzō, many of whose poems were just like the sound of the wind, was in love with treetops—as well as inorganic substances like the air and the wind. Rather, I imagine it was quite the opposite. He must have written those useless things out of a desire to depict people at the moment the wind passes through their bodies, or the sight of himself staring at whinnying ponies in the woods. Am I the only one who feels something akin to suffering in the poetry of this man who wanted to portray the human, stripped bare, but simply could not depict a person shouting this, and so instead wrote only echoes, only the tracks left behind by earlier passages? This intensity is better felt in his poem called “Lightning” in the April issue of Shii no ki, rather than the one called “Early Spring,” published in the May issue. Master of the language of trees and quite enraged, he emerges before us by breaking through the scenery. On the other hand, “Life in the Countryside” by Ema Shōko, provides the usual inexplicable pleasure that is like listening to music that is out of focus. No matter what the situation, she never tries to put things in focus. We feel a bit lost. And then just at that moment, a vividly beautiful curve. I always expect great things from Hirano Jinkei, and he has never disappointed. “Divergence” is a deftly constructed poem. In “A moment with an old friend,” Uchida Tadashi depicts the fragility
of emotions that are toppled like dominos before kind words. No real object is visible, but its projection casts blurry rings at our chests. Such are the things I feel from the poems of Uchiyama Yoshirō. In both “Daily life” and “Contemplation” from the March issue, he seems to express an interior symmetry using only straight lines. “Roof mechanic” by Abe Tamotsu is a sweet lyric poem. We always imagine the picture of a young girl with a bouquet of flowers, wonder if it isn’t a bit too distant in terms of music—and the thorns of those roses are shining like clear crystal needles. “Song of March” by Takamatsu Akira seems rather gentle. But the seasonal winds are no longer pastorals. Like those footsteps, they slap us on the cheek as they pass by. Walking through the woods, I discover a single tree with very smooth bark. It is unfamiliar to me, and so I wonder what it is. I read Odakane Jirō’s work for the first time. “Song of Stone” is like looking at the jagged breaks in refracted light. Something akin to viscosity indicates a faint brightness.
The trees stand silent. As if to conquer time, for the sake of a thousand years. Purity was not the difference between water and beer. I found being unable to see the sky from between the trees suffocating.
EMA SHŌKO AND MY RADIANT DREAMS
Ema-san is a cheerful and energetic lady who always seems to be having a good time. All the more so when we meet up in Ginza—the reds and yellows of her clothes reflect the brilliant colors of the city in the background, making Ema-san all the more beautiful. Walking with her, I often catch her singing lightly or keeping time with her fingers. It appears as if she enjoys a special music being played somewhere, that she alone can distinguish out of the cacophony of the city—I believe that she alone gets it, and that I do not. She seems to stroll around Ginza quite a bit. I feel more comfortable in my dark village at night, with the toads croaking and the owls hooting, whereas Ema-san in Ginza is like this: Oh I often see Jō-san from Bungeihanronsha, I saw Kitasono-san walking around without a hat, I saw Gyō-san, he was so tan he looked black, probably because he plays tennis, I saw Komatsu Kiyoshi-san twice in one day, and then we had tea at Columbin, and Komatsu-san said, “Ema-san you must have gotten married,” and when I asked why, he said “because you’ve lost weight,” and that irritated me so I told him that I would indeed report to him when I got married, I think he must have been drunk, that Komatsu-san—and as she goes on like that, this season in Ginza opens up wide like a parasol—–—I’m imagining these streets where you can get a pot of flowers for a ten-sen coin; or stores with tanks of tropical fish; or the lively ways of acquaintances who I greet with a smile even though I haven’t made the effort to see them in a while—and it all makes me want to run away from this dark village that seems to harbor ghosts, get rustled by the rumbling train and then spit out right in the middle of Ginza. The Ginza that Ema-san speaks of is a beautiful, musical city with a fast beat, in strange contrast to the hot and shadeless Ginza that I sometimes find myself trudging through.
Ema-san’s healthy, boundless energy is contagious—so I, too, feel more energetic, and I hear my voice jump up an octave. I can hear it rising, getting too high, and yet I can’t stop myself. Ema-san has many attractive words in her possession. Or rather, perhaps she just has that particular effect, even when she talks about boring things. And it seems that it all tends to come out when she’s talking to me. Ema-san can’t hold anything back; she talks like she’s trying to prevent it all from overflowing completely. Usually they are very happy thoughts, and there are times that I am so blinded by them that my words get caught and I am unable to respond. There are so many great things about her, and she’s able to express them to the outside world with ease and honesty. She is beautiful like some kind of luminous body, illuminating those who are near her with that light. That’s it, that’s all there is to it, she’ll say, and I’ll give her a look that says I know there’s more, there’s more you’re going to say. I can’t remember where I first met Ema-san, or when we became close friends. She may have just started acting like we were close, when I wasn’t paying attention, or maybe it’s because when she laughs, I laugh, as if a spell has been cast on me, and that when she is acting lighthearted I find myself copying that, and before I know it, there is something that wasn’t in me before that has steadily made its way inside.
I’m rotting! Cheer me up! On the other end of the phone line she sounds a bit troubled, so I go over expecting to cheer her up, but then when I see her I have a big laugh because she’s bemoaning the most trifling little thing. I’m usually the one who needs cheering up, and I must seem like I really need it, because she says Cheer up, what do you want to eat? Perhaps people get hungry when things aren’t going well. And I say that I want to eat the most delicious thing in the world, and then she takes me out to eat until I get sleepy.
We only see each other once a month or so. When we meet, the conversation picks up as if we left off only the day before. We’ve hardly ever talked about poetry or literature or anything. If I bring up something to do with poetry, Ema-san looks kind of squeamish, maybe she is kind of embarrassed about it. I don’t even know what kinds of books she reads. I’ve seen some theater history books on her shelf, from back when she had joined the Tsukiji-za and was seriously trying to get into theater. Every time I see her work published I wonder when she wrote it, or what her face looks like when she is writing a poem, silly things like that. Ema-san loves the ocean. I remember we were once at Ōmori-Kaigan, resting our chins on the concrete wall staring into the darkening ocean and talking about going abroad. Right where the Tokyo Bay Steamship turned on its light to enter the bay. That summer, there was that little trip we took to the Izu islands with those magazine editors. It was very choppy and the whole ship was getting swallowed by the waves, and the men and children and everyone was completely seasick—but Ema-san alone was perfectly fine. We were jealous and called her “female pirate.” This female pirate told us that if only we had gotten shipwrecked, we might have washed up all the way in San Francisco. This reckless female pirate claims she wishes she could have been washed away indeed. The Ōmori ocean was murky and full of driftwood. We joked about how you could ride a freight ship to Marseilles for only 300 yen, or that there were jobs in Chile for Japanese school teachers. And Ema-san would say, Oh I want to go, I really want to go, and it really seemed like she might just up and go. Other times, we would talk about opening a trendy shop in Ginza together, maybe a bookstore, maybe a cake shop, and we’d daydream about the fun we’d have spending the money we made. And so our dreams matched up very nicely. Ema-san had a sparkle in her eye. And then a thought would occur to me. Even if we harbored similar dreams, it was Ema-san that somehow had the ability to realize them and be satisfied. Me, I’m just a dreamer. But I do believe that Ema-san has the ability and opportunities to realize these dreams. Ema-san never gets tired, and she’s very much at peace with her own happiness. But at home she’s a bit spoiled. She’s fawned over like a butterfly or flower. The other day Ema-san said she just doesn’t like women like Anna Karenina. And then we got to talking about wives in novels, and how some wives are just so greedy. Fortunately neither of us are married yet, so we felt free to badmouth wives. Ema-san said she’s been attracted to older men lately. I don’t know much about her past, so I don’t know, but I wonder if this was some kind of change of heart(?)
DIARY
October 16th
Early morning, I open the window and see a hearse exiting the hospital gates. When I see the black shape making its way through the smoky rain, I feel my heart stop. I regret having looked outside. When Dr. Aoki makes his rounds in the afternoon he says I don’t need to have the surgery. I had been hoping for the operation to slice into that space under my chest and hack away at all the bad parts, annihilate that bug of a disease that has been tormenting me—but now I am filled with regret and uncertainty. I feel sick all day from the image of that black shape in the morning.
21st
In the morning I don’t feel so we
ll, and doze off a little. I feel more energetic in the evening, though my fever has gone up. I have them cut me some canned pineapple. I feel all the better after they wash my hands and feet. Yuri-san comes by. She says she is going to Otsuka to buy socks, and that she is going to buy some nougat and eat it on the way home. Right after that, my brother comes. He seems really busy. He pulls out the mail from his bag. He tells me what’s going on outside of this vacation home, staying until well past nine. I’m glad when it feels like my night has been significantly shortened. He gives me a dose of sleeping pills. I read journals until around midnight. And then I take the pills and go to sleep. At around one o’clock I suddenly feel quite ill, and ask for a shot.
October 22nd Sunny
Maybe it’s the shot from the night before, but I feel very drowsy. The morning sun pours in through the window. I sunbathe on my bed. Bathing my whole body in the autumn sun and drenched in sweat, I feel very good. I’ve been in the hospital for two weeks now. The people in the hallway are bustling around because Dr. Inada is making his rounds today. They give me clean white sheets. A cluster of dragonflies flies higher and higher into the blue sky, then disappears. I wonder where they come from, so many of them. When I look out the window and see students and workers passing by on the street, moving their healthy-looking limbs, I, too, long for thicker legs and hands. I stick my arms up in the air and rotate them two or three times, but they look skinny and dark and dirty to me and it brings me down. I tell Dr. Aoki that I don’t like being in the hospital because I can’t sleep at night, and he says that I should go home then. Today they are supposed to be determining the name of my illness. Yuri-san comes in the evening. She talks about school, then goes home. My brother does not come.