Sumário

The Moon
Sheep Song
I. Pray
II.
III.
IV.
Exhaustion
I.
II
III
IV
V
VI
Song of Upbringing
I
II
Sorrow Already Spoiled
This Soiled Sorrow
An Innocent Song
Rain in June
Autumn Poem
1.
2.
3.
A BONE
SAD MORNING
EVENING WITH SUNLIGHT
AN EVENING IN SPRING
The beach in the moonlight
Circus
prose poem: never to return
AT THE GRAVE OF NAKAHARA CHUYA (1907-1937)
1 – At the Grave of Nakahara Chuya
2 - AFTER NAKAHARA CHUYA
3 AT THE GRAVESIDE
 The Moon

More solitary than ever tonight, the moon

wonders at her doubting foster father.
Time hauls a silver tide away to the desert.
An old man’s earlobes glow like fireflies.

Ah, forgotten embankments of canals,

tanks, the earth resounding in my chest…
The moon pulls out a rusty silver case
and languidly smokes a cigarette.

Heels over head, seven celestial nymph

skeep dancing round about
but give no comfort

to the moon’s heart, weltering in disgrace.

O far-flung stars!
The moon awaits her executioner.
 Sheep Song
for Yoshihiro Yasuhara

I. Pray

May I look up when I die!

May not this small chin become smaller still!
Yes, I am blamed for what I have
not felt, an invocation to death, I believe.

Ah, if only I look up!

Then, at least, I might be as one who feels everything.

II.

O expectations, stale and dismal airs,

leave this body of mine!
I want nothing anymore but simplicity,
quiet, murmurs and order.

O acquaintances, grantors of dark disgrace,

do not wake me again!
I will endure my solitude,
arms seeming already useless.

O eyes that open doubtfully,

open eyes that stay motionless for a while,
 ah, heart, that believes in others more than itself,

O expectations, stale and dismal airs,

leave, leave this body of mine!
I enjoy nothing anymore but my wretched dreams.

III.

“My youth was nothing but a lowering storm occasionally lanced by

sudden sun.”
—Baudelaire

there was a nine-year-old child

the child was a girl
and as if the world’s atmosphere were hers
as if she could lean on it
she tilted her head
when she spoke with me

I warmed myself at a kotatsu

she sat on the tatami
an exceptionally mild winter afternoon
my room aglow with sunlight
when she tilted her head
her earlobes seemed translucent
 trusting me fully at peace
the girl’s heart was of an orange color
its warmth neither overflowed
nor shrank like a deer
I forgot about everything then
and gently contemplated time

IV.

Even so, my heart is lonely.

Every night, alone in a boarding room,
thinking thoughtlessly about thought, a monotonous
and wretched heart’s duet…

I hear the sound of a steam whistle

and think of travel, my childhood—
no, no, I don’t think of childhood or travel,
but see what looks like travel, what looks like childhood…

My heart, which thinks thoughtlessly about thought,

is closed, like a casket fuzzy with mold.
White lips, dry cheeks,
fade into the cold stillness…
The more I get used to it, the more I endure.
This painful solitude. Without
my realizing it they fall, sudden and strange,
tears which are no longer tears of love…
 Exhaustion

For all men, there comes a time of

languishing.
—Proverb

First, one must have a thirst.

—Catherine de Medicis
I.

I didn't awaken with a sense of purpose anymore.

I awoke and a sad, everyday scene
I'd bitterly dreamed of ...
(I could neither settle in
nor escape that place)
Then evening came, and I thought
this world is like an ocean.
I imagined a watery expanse at dusk,
where a haggard boatman rows
with unsteady hands.
Looking to see if there are any fish or not,
he passes by staring at the surface.

II

once I believed
love poems were foolish

now I read love poems

just for the sake of it

and yet perhaps I want

to reach a higher state of poetry
 I don't know if that's right or wrong
but such a feeling persists anyway

and sometimes irritates me

provoking outrageous desires

once I believed
love poems were foolish

yet now I do nothing

but dream about love

III

how am I to know if this

is my degradation or not

this arm-dangling indolence

the sun still shines today blue sky

perhaps this idleness is all I have

ever been able to manage

or perhaps I only yearned

for honest desires because I was idle

ah even so even so
I have never thought to be a man who only dreams!

IV

nevertheless the good and evil of this world

 are not easily understood by humanity

countless reasons which we cannot fathom

govern every little thing

yet if I am patient and quiet like spring water

in mountain shade it can be fun

I believe all that is visible from the train

mountains grass the sky river everything

will soon melt into complete harmony

and rise into the blue to form a rainbow

now how to turn a profit

how to avoid losing face

I mean you people who spend all your time

on such things making demands of others

I used to think your attitude was reasonable

and eagerly went right along with you

but today I will come to my senses again

like a rubber band snapping back

thus within this window of idleness

I spread my fingers in the shape of a fan

and inhale the sky drink time

 floating a frog on the water

night sees the stars as night

ah back of the sky back of the sky

VI

But this condition persists:

although I believe I must behave as others do,
I feel myself small,
am even shocked by a department store delivery boy.

And although the reason is always clear—

trash, trash, trash of disbelief at the bottom of my heart.
However absurd it seems, these two
no doubt consist in me eternally, can never fall away.

Drawn to the sound of music,

I feel revived a little,
but the moment those two die within me—

ah, songs of sky and ocean,

I think I know the very essence of beauty,
and yet how hard it is to have no way of shaking off my idleness!
 Song of Upbringing

infancy
the snow which fell on me
was like floss silk

childhood
the snow which fell on me
was like sleet

seventeen to nineteen
the snow which fell on me
dropped like hail

twenty to twenty-two
the snow which fell on me
seemed like balls of ice

twenty-three
the snow which fell on me
looked like a blizzard

twenty-four
the snow which fell on me
became so mournful

II
the snow which falls on me
falls like petals
when the burning firewood makes a noise
and the frozen sky darkens

the snow which fell on me

 so delicate and lovely
fell reaching out a hand

the snow which fell on me

was like tears
that sink into a burning forehead

to the snow which fell on me

I offered heartfelt thanks and prayed to God
that I would live a long life

the snow which fell on me

was so chaste
Sorrow Already Spoiled
Today again a little snow falls
on sorrow already spoiled
Today again even the wind blows
through sorrow already spoiled

Sorrow already spoiled

is for example a fox's hide
On sorrow already spoiled
a little snow falls and it shrinks

Sorrow already spoiled

never hopes nor wishes anything
Sorrow already spoiled
in languor dreams of death

Pitifully I fear
Sorrow already spoiled
dusk and there's nothing I can do
against sorrow already spoiled . . .
 This Soiled Sorrow
(Outra tradução do anterior)

On this soiled sorrow

Does the snow fall silently still today
On this soiled sorrow
Does the harsh wind blow still today

This soiled sorrow

Is but a mangy mink cloak
This soiled sorrow
Shrinks away from the drifting snow

This soiled sorrow

Wishes for nothing, wants for nothing
This soiled sorrow
Dreams only of death in lethargy
From this soiled sorrow
I shy away pathetically
Against this soiled sorrow
I can do nothing, as the sun sets again…
 An Innocent Song

Looking back, I’ve come a long way

Since that winter evening, when I was twelve
Echoing across the harbour’s sky
The steam of the whistle; whither is it now

The moon was nestled between the clouds

And when I heard that steam whistle blow
I flinched, gripped hard by a sudden fear
The moon, then, was in the skies

How many years have passed since then

The steam of the whistle which I’d blankly follow
With my gaze, and be fraught with sorrow
The boy I had been; whither is he now

Now I am with wife and child

Looking back, I’ve come a long way
Though still for a time into the future
I daresay I shall live on some more

I daresay I shall live on some more

But while the days and nights of the distant past
Seem so sweet and familiar
 and for which I long
My confidence, before them, withers and dies

Alas, as long as I am alive

My nature bids I at the very least try
With that thought I am filled,
despite myself
By a sense of pathetic pitifulness

I’ve given it some thought, and well,

Say that I do give life a try
There will be times where I shall yearn for the past, and, well,
I suppose I will get by somehow

Given some thought, it’s very simple

All that matters is the way I see it
It’s less getting by, and more that I
Haven’t a choice
Really, it’s all I can do to live

So I think, but that is that

That winter evening, when I was twelve
Echoing across the harbour’s sky
The steam of the whistle; whither is it now.
 Rain in June

Another day of morning rain

the color of iris green
Eyes damp with tears, the long-faced girl
appears then fades away

When she appears and fades away

a sinking sorrow, like the rain
drizzling over all the fields
and falling without end

　　　 　　　Beating drums and piping

flutes
　　　　　　 the innocent children play
　　　　　　 inside the house on Sunday

　　　　　　 Beating drums and piping

flutes
　　　　　　 as they play the rain will
fall
　　　　　　 outside on the lattice wall
 Autumn Poem

1.

The field until yesterday

was burning now
it stretches under clouds
and sky unmindful.
And they say the rain
each time it comes
brings autumn that much
closer even more so
autumn borne cicadas
sing out everywhere,
nesting sometimes in a tree
awash in grass.

I smoke a cigarette,
smoke spiraling
through stale air,
I try and try
to stare
at the horizon.
Can’t be done,
The ghosts of heat
and haze
stand up or flop down.
And I find myself alone there,
squatting.

A cloudy sky
dark golden light
plays off now
as it always was,
so high I can’t help
 looking down.
I tell you that I live
resigned to ennui,
drawing from my cigarette
three different tastes.
Death may no longer be
so far away.

2.

“He did, he said so long and then

he walked away, he walked out from that door,
the weird smile that he wore, shiney like brass,
his smile that didn’t look like someone living.

His eyes like water in a pond the color when it clears,

or something. He talked like someone somewhere else.
Would cut his speech up into little pieces.
He used to think of little things that didn’t matter.”

“Yes, just like that. I wonder if he knew that he was dying.

He would laugh and tell you that the stars became him
when he stared at them. And that was just a while ago.

………………………

A while ago. Swore that the clogs that he was wearing weren’t
his.”

3.

The grass was absolutely still,

 and over it a butterfly was flying.
He took it all in from the veranda,
stood there dressed in his yukata.
And I, you know, would watch him
from this angle. Staring after it,
that yellow butterfly. I can remember now
the whistles of the tofu vendors
back and forth, the telephone pole
clear against the evening sky.
Then he turned back to me and said “I ...
yesterday, I flipped a stone over that weighed
maybe a hundred pounds.” And so I asked
“how come? and where was that?”
Then you know what? He kept on staring at me,
straight into my eyes, like he was getting mad,
or something … That’s when I got scared.

How strange we are before we die …

 A BONE
Look at this, it’s my bone,
a tip of bone torn from its flesh,
filthy, filled up with woes,
it’s the days of our lives
sticking out, a blunt bone
bleached by the rain.

There’s no shine to it,

innocent, stupidly white,
absorbing the rain,
blown back by the wind,
just barely
reflecting the sky.

Funny imagining, seeing

this bone on a chair
in a restaurant
packed to the gills, and eating
mitsuba leafy and boiled,
a bone but alive.

Look at this, it’s my bone,

and is that me staring
and wondering: Strange,
was my soul left behind
and has it come back
where its bone is,
daring to look?

On the half dead grass

on the bank of a brook
in my home town, standing
and looking – who’s there?
 Is it me? A bone
sticking out
a bone stupidly white
and high as a billboard.
SAD MORNING

sound of a brook
comes down
the mountain:
spring light
like a stone:
the water running
from a spout
split open:
more a grey-haired
crone, her story
pouring out.

mica mouth
I sing through:
falling backward
singing:
drying up
my heart
lies wrinkled:
tightrope walker
in between
old stones.
 o unknown fire
bursting in air!
o rain of echoes
wet and crowned!
…………………….......
clap my hands clapping
this way and that
EVENING WITH SUNLIGHT
hills retreat from me
arms crossed over chest
and sunsets colored golden
mercy colored

grasses in fields
sing oldtime songs
on mountains trees
old hearts remote and still

here in this time and place

I’ve been meat of a clam
a babe’s foot stamps on

here in this time and place

surrender stubborn intimate
arms crossed walking off
 AN EVENING IN SPRING

the tin roof eats the rice crackers

spring now the evening’s at peace
ashes thrown underhand soon turning pale
spring now the evening’s at rest

ah! it’s a scarecrow – is it or is it?

& a horse neighing? – nothing I hear
only the moon shining slimes itself up
and an evening in spring limps behind

a temple out in a field dripping red

and the wheels on my cart lose their grease
the historical present was all I know
the sky and mountains mock me and mock me
a tile has just peeled loose from the roof
now & forever it’s spring
the evening is moving forward and wordless
where it finds its way into a vein
 The beach in the moonlight

One button dropped onto the shore in the moonlight.

Although I don’t think I can use it for something, I put it in my

pocket because I didn’t have reason to throw it into the sea.

One button dropped onto the shore in the moonlight.

Although I don’t think I can use it for something, I can’t throw it

to the moon and I can’t throw it to the sea. So I put it in my
pocket.

This button I picked up impressed my finger and my heart.

Why do I have to throw it?
 Circus

Many eras have past, brown war is over.

Many eras have past, the coldest wind blows.

Many eras have past, everyone gathers here tonight.

The circus'tent has a high beam.

There is one swing.
It's so high that we can’t see.

Performers are hanging upside-down reaching down thire

hands.
Under the dirty cloth roof,
YUYAAN YU YON YUYAYUYON. *

Candles lit and breathe white smoke.

Audience looks like sardines and they are making a noise like
rubbing together oystar's shells.
YUYAAN YU YON YUYAYUYON.

There is a deep darkness outside yet.

The night keeps growing darker.
The parachute of nostalgic...
YUYAAN YU YON YUYAYUYON.

* Onomatopeia
 prose poem: never to return
-Kyoto

World’s end, the sunlight that fell down to earth was warm, a
warm wind blowing through the flowers.

On a wooden bridge, the dust that morning silent, a mailbox red

and shining all day long, a solitary baby carriage on the street, a
lonely pinwheel.

No one around who lived there, not a soul, no children playing

there, and I with no one near or dear to me, no obligation but to
watch the color of the sky above a weathervane.

Not that I was bored. The taste of honey in the air, nothing
substantial but enough to eat and live from.

I was smoking cigarettes, but only to enjoy their fragrance. And

weirdly I could only smoke them out of doors.

For now my worldly goods consisted of a single towel. I didn’t

own a pillow, much less a futon mattress. True I still had a tooth
brush, but the only book I owned had nothing but blank pages.
Still I enjoyed the heft of it when I would hold it in my hands
from time to time.

Women were lovely objects but not once did I try to go with one.
It was enough to dream about them.
 Something unspeakable would urge me on, & then my heart,
although my life was purposeless, started pounding with a kind
of hope.

In the woods was a very strange park, where women, children

and men would stroll by smiling wildly. They spoke a language I
didn’t understand and showed emotions I couldn’t unravel.

Looking up at the sky, I saw a spider web, silver and shining.

AT THE GRAVE OF NAKAHARA CHUYA (1907-
1937)
(Homenagem ao Chuya)
-Yamaguchi, Japan
1 – At the Grave of Nakahara Chuya
the boy with the round hat
sang boldly boldly
too encumbered with his loneliness he was
and felt like ice the ground
white underneath his shoe
chameleon was too
sportjacket toothpaste smeared
black teeth like geisha’s were
that signaled empty space
and ghosts
— had gone to live with ghosts —
but carried a black flag
we saw him high above our heads
lost children by his side
the black flag in his hand
was waving in a tide of flags
— and frogs —
a frog who dares not see the moon
is like the moon herself
 a round hat that the boy wears
that the gang of poets moves
head unto head
the scratching of a nail against a stone
a bone against a wind
this growing doubt that left him
limp like a green leek
speaks out his hatred of all thought
sweet dada boy who sang and wept
Napoleon’s tears at night
but found no freedom
had to bring back the babe’s bones
morning glory
body’s reflex
women transforming to white horses
cold as stone
or history
the voice of rimbaud too much for his ears
so that he stumbles
wonders if the bones were really his
white tips of bones
emerging from the ground around him
bones that sat in lunchrooms
that munched on watercress and rice
waved to the crowds of riders
 bones that wore language like a flag
poured tea
drew deeply on a cigarette
sought out a woman with breasts painted
with a nipple for a nose
that brought the parachutist’s nostalgia
to a boil followed a circus
to the edge of town
where it engaged in brown wars
and the boy who sang
and wore a round hat
fell into a broken sleep
and came out of his grave
and sat with us
And sang in a broken sleep

[THE SONG] As sportscoats are to toothpaste

as the boa is to scales
as black teeth are to playful ghosts
as seasons are to smiles
As telephones are to toasters
as angels are to air
as wagon wheels are to ups and downs
as horses are to fire
As Buddha is to Buddha
as a toenail is to glass
 as the way we make love is tight like that
as ascensions are to cash
As harbors are to hairpins
as napoleons are to joy
as bicycles are to icicles
bones are to a dada boy

2 - AFTER NAKAHARA CHUYA

I want to kill 3000 crows
& stay in bed with you forever

he is their dada god

& stands there shoeless
with his umbrella ripped away
whatever spills from him
raises up bubbles
over the flooded road

“my friend” he cries “my life

is like the rain” in buckets
here where the candle should be lit
and you inside your room
be safer

women enter the white street

by twos approach them
 in the rain
look how they shake their green umbrellas

flower pots bob up and down

wash-basins slither past
ponds are abandoned by their carp
a world of messengers and rain
and disappearing towns

no shoes and no umbrelas

candles light up my room

my chewing gum stuck to my ear

forever

3 AT THE GRAVESIDE

if you feel your body like a single speck you

will not mind about anything
N.C.
it is because of you we come here
sixty years beyond your death
and pour a jug of sake
 on your stone
the round voice of the priest
the sacerdotal lamentation sounding
high over those hills
the little sticks of incense
plunged like children’s toys
into the Earth
the century around us fizzling out
its greater terror absent from your life
but entering your dreams like mine
last night in which I waited
on a rooftop
saw a city opening in front of me
a message posted on the mansard tiles
the pope’s hope of salvation
written large that tells us
“JESUS KILLS”
until I lose my grip my fingers
barely holding on
your words repeating in my mind
people are strange when just about to die
as you were too poor boy
poor stranger
never to be the ninety-year-old man
the ancient sage
 victim of disasters seared
into the flesh
in flight above a disappearing city
dada prophecy
and pope’s decree fusing together in your aftermath
but on this morning in your native town
with nothing better than the air
and nothing worse
a bunch of poets stands beside your grave
the bottle having passed around
knowing the dirty truth
the numbers that have never added up
the dada gods evoked by words
absent in life
the sweet surrender to each other’s touch
who come and go
now ready for our dance like children
poets forever
lovers
who make a free fall into empty space
vanishing into the dark sky