Wednesday, February 29, 2012

(random selections from shinkichi takahashi's


book of zen poems afterimages, all of them translated from japanese by lucien stryk and takashi ikemoto)


......................................................


White Paper


I was walking on white paper.
However far I went, there
I remained, between the print,
Making no attempt to read, of course,
Part of the paper itself.

She was correcting proofs
with red ink.  At a puff of wind
the paper stirred, and I saw
that she badly needed
a haircut.  Miserable.

"I'll bring you fame!" I cried,
Then continued to walk
Until, before me, I saw a book,
Unopened.  A fossil.  I stepped
Over it and, without a glance, moved on.


.............................................................


Comet


A word swims through the air-
Fish; vomited dust speck;
Jet through the sound barrier,
Full of Thames fog.
How far is it flying?

A man wrings out a casting net
In the upper reaches of the Milky Way:
Rain pours through his brains,
Cliffs reveal themselves.

The sun, ah the sun, is dissolved
In blue, and now seer and seen
Are one: wet, smoky.

There are no rocks around,
The word plunged down the precipice-
Now blanched, dead,
Mere time carcass, it sways
Like seaweed on the beach.

Its eyes devoured by crows,
The waves splash over it.

Then as from inside a violincello
Someone said to himself:
'The sun is hidden
In a single sand grain'.

An airfield too luxuriant with word endings,
Contact of white and black clouds
Followed by thunder-
The birth of new figures.

The moment it is announced
It rises with the globe
Into the stratosphere,
Up to the shores of constellations,
The word.


..........................................................


Quails


It is the grass that moves, not the quails.

Weary of embraces, she thought of
Committing her body to the flame.

When I shut my eyes, I hear far and wide

The air of the Ice Age stirring.
When I open them, a rocket passes over a meteor.

A quail's egg is complete in itself,

Leaving not room enough for a dagger's point.
All the phenomena in the universe: myself.

Quails are supported by the universe

(I wonder if that means subsisting by God).
A quail has seized God by the neck

With its black bill, because there is no

God greater than a quail.
(Peter, Christ, Judas: a quail.)

A quail's egg: idle philosophy in solution.

(There is no wife better than a quail.)
I dropped a quail's egg into a cup for buckwheat noodles,

And made havoc of the Democratic Constitution.

Split chopsticks in the back, a quail husband
will deliver dishes on a bicycle, anywhere.

The light yellow legs go up the hill of Golgotha.

Those quails who stood on the rock, became the rock!
The nightfall is quiet, but inside the congealed exuviae

Numberless insects zigzag, on parade.



..........................................



Destruction



The universe is forever falling apart-

No need to push the button,
It collapses at a finger's touch:
Why, it barely hangs on the tail of a sparrow's eye.

The universe is so much eye secretion,

Hordes leap from the tips
Of your nostril hairs.  Lift your right hand:
It's in your palm.  There's room enough
On the sparrow's eyelash for the whole.

A paltry thing, the universe.

Here is all strength, here the greatest strength.
You and the sparrow are one
And, should he wish, he can crush you.
The universe trembles before him.


..................................................



Disclosure



The sparrow sleeps, thinking of nothing.

Meanwhile the universe has shrunk to half.
He's attached by a navel string, swimming
In a sea of fluid, amniotic, slightly bitter.

The centre is 'severance'- no sound at all-

Until the navel string is snapped.  All of which
Was told by her as she sat astride Pegasus,
The poet on a circuit of the universe.

The sparrow came at her, like a sword,

And suddenly from her buttocks- the sun!
The sparrow carried the stained sheets
To the moon.  On drawing the clouds apart,

He discovered the cold corpse of Mars.

Not once had he disclosed the secrets of his life.


...................................................




Rat on Mount Ishizuchi



Snow glitters on the divine rocks

At the foot of Mount Ishizuchi.
Casting its shadow on the mountain top,
A rat flies off.

At the back of the sun,

Where the rats pound rice into cakes,
There's a cavity like a mortar pit.

A flyer faster than an airplane,

That's the sparrow.
Mount Ishizuchi, too, flies at a devilish speed,
Ten billion miles a second,
From everlasting to everlasting.

Yet, because there's no time,

And always the same dusk,
It doesn't fly at all:
The peak of Mount Ishizuchi
Has straightened the spine
Of the Island of Futana.

Because there's no space

The airplane doesn't move an inch:
The sun, the plane boarded by the rat,
Are afloat in the sparrow's dream.


.............................................



Black Smoke



I've thrown my 'me' away:

The river willows bud pale blue.

Where did I toss that 'me'?

I sought it in wind and water.

Resigned, I looked up:

A cat at the controls of a helicopter!

Landing and sidling up to me,

Where I lay flat on my back, she asked:

'Have you emerged from earth- you?'

'Who- me?'

'Well then, what's that grass sprouting

All over your behind?'

Out shot my hand and grabbed

The cat's tail, which I was still holding
When the helicopter went up again.

At last I had found my 'me',

I thought, but not for long.

Night fell silently, but high above

Two glittering eyeballs wouldn't disappear.

They were burning on me,

As if the 'me' I'd abandoned,
Overpowered by loneliness,
Was frantically craving me.

Oh, I understood that those eyeballs

Might have been the cat's-
How she must have suffered without her tail!

I lit a cigarette, black smoke rose,

Then I quickly buried it.

Then came a most marvelous idea:

Even if I didn't find my 'me',
I'd still have my tail!


.................................................



Mascot



Somebody is breathing inside me-

Birds, the very earth.

The ocean's in my chest.  Walking,

I always throw myself down.

Newssheets, a puppy were dancing in the wind-

Trucks rushed by,

Empty trucks stout enough to carry the earth

On their puncture-proof tires.

I instant I raised my hand to wave,

I was nowhere.

The puppy was sprawled out on its belly,

Run over- again, again.

You're a badger, I'll bet, posing as a mascot

With that moonlit tie

And, sticking from your pocket, night's flower.



....................................................



Words



I don't take your words

merely as words.
Far from it.

I listen

To what makes you talk-
Whatever that is-
And me listen.


.................................................



Misty Rain



A misty rain falls this morning,

A phantom dog creeps along.

As I sit drinking a cup of tea

An amorphous cat leaps on my lap.

For awhile in my imaginary tea garden

I arrange rocks and plant bamboos.

Then, with the fall of cloud-swept night,

I close the window and turn in.


.........................................



Sun



Stretched in the genial sun

The mountain snake
Tickled its length along the rock.

The wind rustled the sunshine,

But the snake,
Fully uncoiled, was calm.

Fifty thousand years ago!

Later the same sun
Blazed across the pyramids,

Now it warms my chest.

But below, through
Shattered rock, the snake

Thrusts up its snout, fangs

Flicking at my thoughts
Strewn about the rocks like violets.

It's you, faces cut like triangles,

Have kept the snake alive!
The pavement's greened with leaves.


.................................................................



Sun



It's a fine day

And I'm talking with the sun.
'I don't think there's only one sun,'

I say.  'There are no end of you,

And of course there are the stars:
To be means to be numberless.

And yet, O magnificent,

I delight in your heat.
Dust speck, I adore you.'


.............................................



A Richer Ground



The bus roars through cherry blossoms

Or a snowstorm.  Who knows?

I'm not on it, but then again

I'm not not on it.  Who knows?

Seals glide across an iceberg,

Where bound?  Who knows?

Of course I may be quite wrong,

Which in any case is unavoidable.

The question 'To be or not to be'

Just isn't fair.  I stand on richer ground.


...............................................



Murmuring of the Water



One morning I woke onto a hill

Of withered grasses,
Myself, my family among them.

We swayed, all of us, under the wind,

And so did our shadows.

No more did the laughter of women

Assault my ears,
And I heard the murmuring
Of the limpid water of the Galaxy.

When, desperate, I stretched out

My thin, dry arms,
Stars broke from the sky.


................................................



Magpie



I start across the bridge.

Coming toward me from the other side,
A woman, drenched and perhaps
Having failed to purchase apples, mutters-
'Sardines, sardines'.  Below, listening,
A magpie bobs mournfully up and down.

It is a long black bridge,

So long that to cross it is unthinkable.
My white breath dies, rises and dies.
Life: dust on a bridge rail.
Wars, revolutions: bubbles on a stream.

Late in the frosty night, alone,

I cross an endless bridge.


..................................................