but every night Chuichi

comes home from there exhausted

and bad-tempered.

THE POLITICIANS

Running around here & there

stirring up trouble and bothering people

a bunch of lushes—

fern leaves and cloud:

the world was so chilly and dark—

Before long that sort

will up and rot all by themselves

and be washed away by the rain

and afterwards, only green fern.

And when humanity is laid out like coal

somewhere some earnest geologist

will note them in his notebook.

MOON, SON OF HEAVEN

When I was a child

in all sorts of magazines and newspapers

—how many—photographs of the moon;

face scarred by jagged craters.

I clearly saw that the sun light strikes it.

later I learned it’s terribly cold

and no air.

maybe three times I saw it eclipsed—

the earth’s shadow

slipped over it, clearly,

next, that it probably broke off from earth.

and last, a fellow I met during rice planting

from the Morioka meteorological observatory

once showed me that heavenly body through

a something-mm little telescope

and explained how its orbit and motions

accord with a simple formula.

However. ah,

for me in the end there’s no obstacle

to reverently titling that heavenly body

Emperor Moon.

if someone says

man is his body

that’s a mistake.

and if someone says

man is body and mind

that too is an error

and if one says man is mind,

still it’s wrong.

so—I—

hail the moon as Emperor Moon.

this is not mere personification.

DAYDREAMING ON THE TRAIL

A lonely stretch, in the bind of poor fishing

& drouth,

following the ocean

crossing pass after pass,

fields of wild reeds,

I’ve come this far alone.

dozing in the pale sun

on the sand of a dried-up riverbed

back and shoulder chilled

something bothering me—

I think at that last quartzite pass

I left the oak gate in the fence

of the cowpasture open

probably because I was hurrying—

a white gate—

did I close it or not?

light cool sky,

mistletoe on chestnut floats in vision

manylayered clouds upriver

cool lattice of sunlight

some unknown big bird       calling

faintly, crork       crork

THE GREAT POWER LINE POLE

rain and clouds drift to the ground

susuki-grass red ears washed

fields fresh and live

and the great power line pole of Hanamaki

sparrows on a hundred insulators

then off to pillage a ricefield

whish whish whish whish flying

light of rain and cloud

and nimbly sweeping back to the hundred insulators

at the fork in the Hanamaki road

sparrows

PINE NEEDLES

some raindrops still clinging

—I brought you these pine boughs

—you look like you’d jump up

& put your hot cheek against this green,

fiercely thrust your cheek

into the blue pine needles

greedily

—you’re going to startle the others—

did you want to go to the woods

that much?

burning with fever

tormented by sweat and pain

And me working happily in the sunlight