by Неизвестный
O Notre Dame, Notre Dame,
rock-like, mountain-like, eagle-like, crouching lion–like cathedral,
reef sunk in vast air,
square pillar of Paris,
sealed by the blinding splatters of rain,
taking the slapping wind head-on,
O soaring in front, Notre Dame de Paris,
it’s me, looking up at you.
It’s that Japanese.
My heart trembles now that I see you.
Looking at your form like a tragedy,
a young man from a far distant country is moved.
Not at all knowing for what reason, my heart pounds
in unison with the screams in the air, resounds as if terrified.
O another deluge of wind and rain.
How furious these four elements of nature
that would, if they could, snuff out your existence, return you to the original void.
Smoking phosphorescent shafts of rain.
Scales of the clouds flying, mottled, not quite touching your top.
Blasts of the persistent clinging gales, trying to snap off at least one column of the bell tower.
Innumerable, small, shining elves that bump against the rose window dentils, burst, flow, and flap about.
Only the gargoyles, the monsters on the high architectural rims, visible between splashes,
taking on the flitting flocks of elves,
raise their paws, crane their necks,
bare their teeth, blow out burning fountains of breath.
The many lines of mysterious stone saints make eerie gestures, nod to one another,
the enormous arc-boutants on the side reveal their familiar upper arms.
To their many arms that form arcs aslant,
O what a concentration of wind and rain.
I hear the reverberation of the organ during Mass.
How is the rooster at the tip of the tall slender steeple doing?
Flapping curtains of water have dammed up all directions.
You stand in them.
O another deluge of wind and rain.
A cathedral standing in it
solid with the weight of eight centuries,
a mass of many millions of stones piled and carved by believers of old.
A great scaffold for truth, sincerity, and eternity.
You stand wordless,
you stand, taking on, motionless, the force of the blasting storm.
You know the strength of nature’s force,
have the composure of mind to leave yourself to the rampant wind and rain, till the earth shakes.
O rusty gray iron-color skin of stone glistening in the rain.
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.
W
herever 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.
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