七つさようなら (Seven Goodbyes)

Moving and practice.

1.長歌

最良の
じゃなかった、僕。
思い遣り
僕は返済
できないね。
努力しないよ。
不可能だ。
僕の恩義の
大きさを
覚えなさいよ。
悪かった。
何か教えた
少しずつ
僕はと思う。
でも、僕は
君から何も
習いなかった。

Chōka
I wasn't the best.
I can't repay your kindnesses, can I?
I won't even try; it's impossible
Remember the size of my debt.
I'm sorry.
I taught you something, little by little, I think.
But I didn't learn anything from you, did I?

2. 短歌

暇乞い
するのはきっと
正しいよ。
だから、どうして
罪の意識か。

Tanka
Saying goodbye is surely the right thing to do.
Why do I feel so guilty?

3. 短歌

僕達は
親友じゃない。
書かなくて、
電話しないね、
でも寂しいよ。

Tanka
We're not best friends
We won't write
And we won't call each other
But it's still sad

4. 和歌

守れない約束
致しました。
存じあげて
もちろんおりました。
お女王様
もご存知で
いらっしゃいましたね。
でも拝見
すれば光る
おなりになることが
欲しいですが。
寂しい時、
よくお女王様を
抱きたいです。
思い舟の
下に海に
おなり致したいです。
お落としになりた
不注意な賞賛
だけが僕の
喜びでした。
お女王様も
自己もお無くし
致しますから、
恐ろしいですよ。
どこにお隠れ
致しましょうか、
この遊び無しで？
この服従を
速くお習い
致す原因が
何ですかね？
それで、ここに
約束致した
和歌があります。
この胸で、
遅く過ぎて
すみませんね。

Waka
I made promises I couldn't keep.
I knew it, of course.
My lady knew it, too, right?
But when I see my lady, I want her to become a glimmer of light.
When she is sad, I want to hold her properly.
I want to become the ocean beneath her heavy boat.
The careless praise she dropped is my only joy.
Because I'm losing my lady and myself, I'm frightened.
Where shall I hide without this play?
For what cause will I quickly learn this obedience?
So here are the poems I promised.
From my heart, I'm sorry they're too late.

5. 長歌

寂しくて、
遠 くにあなた
よろめくね。
好きじゃないけど
よく拒否を
いつも言えない。
また呼べば、
あなたに急ぐ。
嬉しいよ、
あなたは誰も
無しでいき
始めることを
習うから。
あなたに僕を
帰ればね。
排水すれば、
大嫌いけど
キスすれば
あなたについて
考える。
魂をもつ
あなただよ。
呼ばなかったね？
そうだから
怒っている。
大嫌いだぜ。

Chōka
Lonely and far away from me, you falter, don't you?
I don't like you, but I can never properly refuse you.
If you call again, I will hurry to you.
I'm glad because you are beginning to learn to live without anyone.
If I return to you, if you drain me, I will hate you—
but whenever I kiss someone, I think about you.
The person who owns my soul is you.
You haven't called, have you?
Because of that, I'm angry.
I hate you.

6. 旋頭歌

僕達は
一緒に仕えて。
同じこと
分けている。
あなたは落ちて、
僕は勝ったね。

Sedōka
Serving together
We share the same thing
You lost and I won

7. 和歌

君の静かな知恵は
俺に謙虚を教えた。
自分の欠陥を俺に
現実的な自身は
見せた人は君だね。
数千の勉強を
優しくて遅く教えた。
信頼はよかったよな。
君と何も隠した。
全部の広い世界は
俺達の微笑みを産んだ。
俺は悪かった時も
座っているもいいで、
困る時、君の側に。
君が自分を咎めたね？
俺の馬鹿なことだぜよ！
あの時、君の言葉
深く感動させたよ。
去る時尾行したくて、
ね、手を前に投げたくて、
腕で抱きしめたくて、
パニックにキスしたくて、
突然に泣きたくかった、
初めて怖かったから。
もう泣いてはいけない
君はと厳しく言った。
だから俺は泣けなかった。
もう持ち続 けなかった。
もう強くなったからよ。

Waka
Your quiet wisdom taught me humility.
The person whose practical confidence showed me my own faults is you.
You taught me thousands of lessons gently and slowly.
It was good to rely on you.
With you, I hid nothing.
All the wide world gave birth to our smiles.
When I was wrong or when I felt helpless, it was all right to sit by you.
You blamed yourself, didn't you?
I was so stupid.
Your words then deeply touched me.
When you left, I wanted to follow.
I wanted to throw my arms forward, hug you, and kiss you.
Suddenly, I wanted to cry, because I was afraid for the first time.
Don't cry, you said strictly.
So I did not cry.
I did not continue to hold you, because I have already become strong.

Chōka

It is the summer:
heat weighs down heavy on me,
bears down on my chest.
There is no escaping it.
Sweat runs down my back
and is absorbed by the sheets.
Nothing is moving.
Overwhelmed and paralyzed,
I can only wait
for the power of the storm.
It comes with the dark,
and then I can move again.
In life, it is summer, too.

Phaedrus

Beautiful, in your beauty to my eye,
faintly reflected images are seen,
truths that I breathed before I left the sky.
Straining against my soul, uncurling, green,
bursting from veins, my wings are warm and clean.
Three thousand years from now, we'll reach the Prime;
we will arrive together as we fly.
I will instruct you, teach you not to lean,
bring you along as I begin to climb.

If there is pain in this, I'll show you why:
something amazing lives behind a screen.
Only through windows can we even try
to come to what Reality might mean,
yet we must make this mystery our queen.
Come very close, but do not touch. Our crime
smudging the glass would mar it, twist it wry.
All we can love is in the mirror's sheen;
mirror me as I mirror you through time.

Tanka

I will fall in love,
and without any partner,
I will sing duets -
and even the pas de deux
will be danced by me alone.

How They Live

She trusts me to treat her as a true friend,
doesn't dream that deep in my mind,
I watch her with warm, wanting eyes.
I touch her with terribly tantalized hands.

She's plain as plywood, playful but simple.
As I lean to look at her little face,
I take it with the tamed intent to change it,
but as I paint it with pale pinks and blues,
I gasp at the gift of girlish beauty:
she's beautiful beyond the bounds of my belief.
I surprise myself with my sudden breath;
I feel faint, but she fails to notice.

She's innocent and idiotic, but optimism becomes her.
She believes with latent resolution that no one
could be unhappy or hard of heart at the park.
She said so with a sincerely serious face.
She is stupid. Stereotypically, stunningly dumb.

I wish she would want to learn,
yet I'm proud of my prize, pregnant with possession.
Being barefacedly better than she is - it's delicious.
I'm provocative, impressive, pretty, powerful.
I intend to protect her totally, if allowed.

This, then, is how they live,
awaiting the wicked wildness of secrets.

Sonnet LXXIX: To Mishima

I can see that you are gifted
by an acquaintance, intimate
and elite, with pain. I've sifted
the words you left: no tricks, no wit -
all your work is crafted tightly,
but your talent is how rightly
you hurt me. You are so enmeshed
that all your words are apples fleshed
years in brine, immersed and bitter,
but since you know these details well,
you must remain detached. They fell,
colors of my pain; they skitter
to me. You've made me, bit by bit,
of agony a replicate.

Twelve Plus One

In the floorboards, a door
is agape. Go to play
underneath, in the floor.
Find a face to adore.
Hesitation: a range
of doubts. What good are they?

Long ago, I heard Change
whisper how they'd arrange
the world: they have a say
in annoying folk. Pray
broadly; I rush to slay
slippers, rush to assay
fear.

_____ The bedroom's a loft
to which they return. Stray
from your quest, friend; they scoffed
again, dancing aloft.

Sin's annulled by a head
of pressed curls and a splay
of long fingers. I shed
my ambitions ahead.

Kindle me to a glow;
I'm aborting my gray
life - but silver will show
and set branches aglow.
Can I follow aright
through adjoining woods, hay
in my hair? Gold glows bright
from leaves - have I a right
to eat fruit with a peel
of gold? It is a spray
of clear rubies that reel
amid diamond's appeal.

I cross over a bridge
they adorned; bare, risqué,
they hold tight that sharp ridge:
words the world would abridge.
We possess not a mount:
a boat crosses the bay
along lives beyond count -
far beyond that amount.
I drift, not to a bout
that's akin to the fray
formed around the drought
above, but close about
a cold palace. A sail
is unneeded.

____________ I say
death's as good of a scale
against those who assail.

Still it seems there's a veil
draped above the stark day:
now I'm given their ale -
when will stupor avail?
I resist the allure
of appeasement; I pay
the young girls to be sure
this wine cup is a lure.

Keep this dream-world aplomb!
Aware, balance the tray
of cold silver, and come -
swallow juice from a plum!
I succumb to avoid
the approval of clay,
to forget the destroyed,
and to laugh in a void,

for the dance is afoot.
I attend, and I stay
'til I reach the dawn's root,
blindly grasping a foot,

for they swore I'd acquire
life forever. I may
now abide in the pyre
on the breath of a choir,
for to keep me apart
from adult sadness, fey
freedom beckons. To start,
they have given a part
of it.

______ Sin lies across
me, assuring a ray
of weak guilt will emboss
deep the shape of a cross -
yet the door left ajar
is allowed to shut. Lay
in the ground your sharp star,
your base hopes in a jar.

Firefly

The firefly works too much _____ and as a gift
fills my ox cart with stars; _____ it decorates
cracks in the tearoom walls, _____ and my thoughts shift.
My mouth cannot stay closed; _____ thoughtfulness grates
on my companions' ears. _____ They did not come
to be censured by me, _____ and the drink waits.
The cutting word is sharp _____ they send to drum
on my unguarded heart, _____ but what I spoke
was my mistake, of course, _____ so I go numb.
Now I can only shrug _____ and laugh at the joke.

May Song

Touched by air, all the crisper
leaves of fall are a whisper
in the trees, slowly numbing
their blood: winter is coming.

Thick July sweats its squalor;
children laugh and grow taller
and too near to the mirror
we hold: winter is nearer.

Sons are born in the morning;
lilac buds bloom, adorning
the spring dawn. We have nursed
on spring: winter is first.

Hospitality

The green growth of the grass hides
the deer in its depth, dark as they are,
but not the unknowingly noble stain
of the bloodred blossoms, blackened by slander.

Even the eyes of this ignorant child
see with swift certainty the grace
not displaced by the placid pleasantries he drops
from his hands on our heads, wholly guileless.

When he hides with his hat his hair and his smile,
sheltered by its shadow, his shoulders' stance
and the elegant air he owns as his inheritance
conspire to speak of the splendor of his face.

These cherished children, the cherry blossoms,
red and reverent, rapidly die,
and the pine perpetuates its piercing green
unweakened by winter white, alone—

but he will hold in his heart both,
and the traits of the trees will trouble him; and in dying,
he will leave a legend to last centuries:
unshaken by shame, it shines through his skin.

Percy

Are we so different?
He and I—
we have the same passion,
the same inspiration;
his talent is no greater,
and his taste is surely less fine—
his journals are crisscrossed with scratched-out words like mine
Yet I have no import, no influence.
Is it only the years of our births that work against me?
Born in his day,
would I, too, have written a symphony as a child?
Would I, too, have conquered India?
Perhaps it is impossible for me,
perhaps greatness is constrained by situation
Perhaps I should aim for targets that still stand.
Or perhaps I will never become a man of any value

(perhaps because I am a woman)

Porch

Who taught me to put words on paper?
It was a man whose work I see in murals,
whom I will never meet.
Who taught me how to lead?
His disemboweled corpse was burned
eight hundred years ago.
The man who taught me to sing—
where is he?
Buried and unhappy in love.
The man who showed me the meaning of power
is somewhere gone,
rotting away, half-drowned and crazy,
and the warm light that surrounded his piano
will not draw to itself again
that handful of innovation—
for those souls, too, have passed away.
Who taught me the meaning of valor?
Who taught me the way to measure a man?
I don't even know his name.
Only his words came to me,
filtered through translation,
their power fractioned.
Yet I learned.
This is my pen, these are my melodies:
a wooden flute and a leftover belief in dignity.
I burn candles at my own piano,
and when winter comes, I will comfort
in my own lap the emaciated fortifications who call me lord.
But the tales of my great deeds will not reach the ears of my teachers.

Walk

Today I walked a long, long way--without
my rush, I watched the way the water paints
beneath the bridge and threw my head to mock
its laws, not caring much to understand.
I brushed my fingertips across the floor--
I've never noticed there its vibrant green
and yellow flowers--wondering about
my own ineptitude, my own restraints,
my faults--but then, most days I do not walk.
I wonder how I dare praise the land
and all her glories when I must ignore
her very often. I'm a lover seen
too seldom, who, hearing in his doubt
his mistress's well justified complaints,
cannot endure them, and resolves to lock
his soul away. Believe in me, unplanned,
because my love is real, and though it's more
unfair to ask, wait--wait for me, my queen.

Chōka

Petals turning brown,
sticky and mashed in my hands,
the lilac blossoms,
sodden with too many rains
that came in April--
when I take away my hand,
it is smeared with slime.
But oh! Their scent is lovely,
lovelier than youth,
these children rotting away,
left too long, hung on the bush.

Doll

For ¥80,000
I could own
the loveliest little doll in the world:
black hair,
hands of alabaster,
eyes that look up just so – all soft curiosity.
O perfect legend,
if I could buy you, too,
would you be mine so completely?

Threnody

Sonnet LXXVIII: For Kurō

Does it make you angry, Specter,
this quiet crystal, cold and tame,
that we bathe with wine and nectar
and call by your unaltered name?
Are you flattered when your glory
is the center of the story
we dramatize in every length,
exaggerating manly strength?
Or are both the same? For neither
is true, perhaps. I like to think
of you as touchable, cheeks pink,
breathing, more alive than either,
but I'm mistaken, too, I'm sure,
so are you angry, Belamour?

Sonnet LXXVII: 先輩 [To my older classmate]

With a practical illusion walking
next to me, I have no need to carry
all reality along; the airy
pillars of the mind bear up with shocking
carelessness our candied tastes, and talking
soon becomes the object. Is it scary
how I bounce along without a wary
thought to spare for danger, scornful, mocking?
Maybe, but I think that's why it beckons:
freedom in this case is somehow safer.
My intense attention feeds this union
(so my prideful glance, uncertain, reckons):
cherishing the wine cup and the wafer
of platonic bonds, I keep communion.

Sonnet LXXVI

In the same way a red blossom
is not hidden by overgrowth,
your dignity has an awesome
superiority that both
shames me and makes me your lover;
it glows through the thickest cover.
This is why I want to believe
in preordination. I grieve
when I see myself; I wonder,
Do my eyes shine with that innate
excellence? Are my shoulders straight?
Can you look and see what's under
my skin? If I weren't something low,
wouldn't my inner goodness show?

Map

I feel the world should be much bigger
than it looks on a map--
but maybe if we killed the people
who build wounds in the gap,
the world would grow again, grow stronger
and move slower than sap--
and I would die for such a vision
in luxurious lap.