Third Series
This year’s ants are rushing through
the shell of last year’s snail, but
look―there in the pond
before us, legs slowly swaying,
two wild ducks are taking a lazy swim
It shakes the house so quietly!
Absorbing the vibrations a gigantic sea lion dashes forward on its stomach
Is that time transparently piercing us?
Or else is it space? Enfolding us tenderly
something raises the heavy and painful wedge of gravity
and invites us to the beauties of a heavenly land,
the universe beyond where on a pitch black canvas
the many milling stars shine with the light of hope
(director of the Information Center and Outreach Department
at the NINS National Astronomical Observatory,Japan)
The light of hope breathing in each leaf and blade of grass
The cosmos is not dark once you take wing into its bosom
Man and woman being a couple of daisies in love
Though we hold hands we are as sun and earth an eternal distance
Is the tick-tock of the clock measuring
our time? Or is it erasing our time?
Each time the universe revolves
our future life turns in an instant into the past
Your hand has a skyline, a wavy mountain line, a time-line, a Japan National Railways line,
a graph line, a light line, a ruled notebook line, the narrow line between
desert and sky, thick lines of feeling, a noisy loop-line, and a lifeline: such fresh, alive lines! I gaze on them with you with the other
Heart-strings vibrating, the sound spreads over the surface of my heart
and the spindle-shaped echoes swell in the measure of my feelings―
yesterday a round sphere, today a finely-pointed needle
My steamy sighs dim the glass of the night sky and
with finger tips I paint the outlines of new constellations just as I please
The secret of travel is to head for the town called Anywhere
Rocking on the back of a cow let yourself be carried along like a song
You pass through stone gates the color of cloudy skies counting invisible birds bearing letters from one of the dead
While my mother sleeps I tend to the garden
The days of caring for her are absorbed into the earth from my fingertips
The season’s last tomato, still young
and the color of translucent jade, becomes a jewel
that brings me a message from the cosmos
Once, in a corner of the school yard, a time capsule turned up
and there was much ado They unscrewed the cap and
found a photo of the strangest thing―falling snow in Tokyo
Yamataikoku and Mesopotamia:
these are worlds I “know” but only as knowledge
Did the things in our textbooks ever really exist?
The past is invisible to me
What has seen it is only the sky
Chasing jumping water fleas I rounded the corner of Second Street
and on the other side an archaeopteryx alighted with its back to me
What seductive eyes
We exit the cinema complex to a thin crescent moon
I remember nothing of the anime feature we’ve seen
Even your words don’t reach my abstracted mind
Where to begin, how to broach my suggestion
of what our tomorrow should be?
The memory of water
deep in the first spring rain drop
is bringing old silent answers
When I listen to the bats' cries as they flit about the night sky
I understand the truth of darkness
A fossil that has patiently and long endured its loneliness
within the inky blackness of the ancient earth
now waits in hope of being moistened by meteoric showers
Descent by the ammonite spiral staircase leads to a shrine on the ocean floor
There the Rosetta Stone shines in secret and peeking in I see
overflowing words, the words of ancient peoples.
Like my own shape the ear spirals, and from
inner bed of soft darkness faintly
rise―echoes of last night's vanished dream?
Or the memory of one unknown who lived once where?
Like a trembling egg encircling virgin sky…
It came to me from the sky to the sky I flung it back
Its reflections lit up the sky―last night's dream!
Brain waves burst from me and wove a portrait of one dead
When we die, we become stars
Freed from our bodies, the elements set off for outer space
Slipping through shining stars and frozen darkness, forever and afar
turning and turning until at the end they meet again and kiss long and hard
And then new stars, new time, new life is born again
Strayed far from the evolutionary tree of life
with the Bear, the Scorpion, and the Swan reborn as constellations
the “missing link” navigates the lakes of eternity
I discover millions of galaxies within our discontent veins
our unhappy brains, longing for an ancient home beyond
the universe while crawling the day crawling the night
pursuing a home of happiness and find nothing but loss
then we notice how far we are from ancestor’s sky.
Gently you suck my breast and in your lips
I see a crimson that once was part of me pulsate as it flows through you
O what joy! Spirals of red and white join our separated bodies again
Red is a sign of moving into the distance, blue of approach
Which color is Voyager's light, which Andromeda's?
Which color is the TV star's shine, which the childrens' future?
But there are things one can do by one's own power:
If you want to catch the blue bird just run with all your might
The way of the earth-born ones is a love dream.
I have it from my parents and I'll take it with me
in the blue eternal night, as a part of my life.
Afloat in the darkness before my eyes, the watery planet bluely glows
How strong is my affection for that ancient home of ours,
how deep my gratitude for the gift of life
Tomorrow, I will dare the blue sky and open up worlds unknown
for there we have our dreams
Once again we are innocent newborns
infants tied by the umbilical cords of our invisible souls to this star, our home
seeking the answer hidden in the faroff distance, asking, asking, without end
