Raven and Magpie do not need the ladder. They fly thru the smoke holes shrieking and stealing. Coyote falls thru; we recognize him only as a clumsy relative, a father in old clothes we don’t wish to see with our friends.

It is possible to cultivate the fields of our own world without much thought for the others. When men emerge from below we see them as the tasked dancers of our magic dreams. When men disappear down, we see them as plain men going somewhere else. When men disappear up we see them as great heroes shining through the smoke. When men come back from above they fall thru and tumble; we don’t really know them; Coyote, as mentioned before.

II

Out of the kiva come

masked dancers or

plain men.

plain men go into the ground.

out there out side all the chores

wood and water, dirt,

wind, the view across the flat,

here, in the round

no corners

head is full of magic figures—

woman your secrets aren’t my secrets

what I cant say I wont

walk round

put my hand flat down.

you in the round too.

gourd vine blossom.

walls and houses drawn up

from the same soft soil.

thirty million years gone

drifting sand.

cool rooms pink stone

worn down fort floor, slat sighting

heat shine on jumna river

dry wash, truck tracks in the riverbed

coild sand pinyon.

seabottom

riverbank

sand dunes

the floor of a sea once again.

human fertilizer

underground water tunnels

skinny dirt gods

grandmother berries

out

through the smoke hole.

(for childhood and youth are vanity

a Permian reef of algae,

out through the smoke hole

swallowd sand

salt mud

swum bodies,       flap

to the limestone blanket—

lizzard tongue,       lizzard tongue

wha, wha, wha    flying

in and out thru the smoke hole

plain men

come out of the ground.

OYSTERS

First       Samish Bay.

then all morning, hunting oysters

A huge feed on white

wood State Park slab-plank bench-

and table

at Birch Bay

where we picked up rocks

for presents.

And ate oysters, fried—raw—cookt in milk

rolld in crumbs—

all we wanted.

ALL WE WANTED

& got back in our wagon,

drove away.

MIYAZAWA Kenji (1896-1933)

… was born and lived most his life in Iwate prefecture in northern Japan. This area, sometimes called the Tibet of Japan, is known for poverty, cold, and heavy winter snows. His poems are all from there.

He was born and lived his life among the farmers: a school-teacher (Chemistry, Natural Sciences, Agriculture) and a Buddhist. His poems have many Buddhist allusions, as well as scientific vocabulary.

The bulk of his work is colloquial and metrically free. His complete work, published after his death, contains seven hundred free-verse poems, nine hundred tanka poems, and ninety children’s stories.

REFRACTIVE INDEX

This one of the seven forests:

more light than under water—

and vast.

tramping up a frozen rutted road,

rutted snow,

toward those shrivelled zinc clouds—

like a melancholick mailman