無我の境地: LOUISE GLÜCK TINHATTERYの極み III

[rhodochrosite]

hyotei edition! previously: rikkai, shitenhoji

ATOBE KEIGO: circe's power

My friend,

Every sorceress is

A pragmatist at heart; nobody sees essence who can't

Face limitation. If I wanted only to hold you
 

I could hold you prisoner.

 

OSHITARI YUUSHI: an adventure

Finished with love?

my heart murmured. To which I responded that many profound discoveries

awaited us, hoping, at the same time, I would not be asked

to name them. For I could not name them. But the belief that they existed—

surely this counted for something?
 

 

MUKAHI GAKUTO: parable of the swans

On the muddy water

they bickered awhile, in the fading light,

until the bickering grew

slowly abstract, becoming

part of their song

after a little longer.

AKUTAGAWA JIROU: the destination

The days were very long, like the days now.

And the intervals, the separations, exalted,

suffused with a kind of passionate joy that seemed, somehow,

to extend those days, to be inseparable from them.

So that a few hours could take up a lifetime.

 

A few hours, a world that neither unfolded nor diminished,

that could, at any point, be entered again–

 

So that long after the end I could return to it without difficulty,

I could live almost completely in imagination.
 

 

SHISHIDO RYOU: the undertaking

The darkness lifts, imagine, in your lifetime.

There you are—cased in clean bark you drift

through weaving rushes, fields flooded with cotton.

You are free. The river films with lilies,

shrubs appear, shoots thicken into palm. And now

all fear gives way: the light

looks after you, you feel the waves' goodwill

as arms widen over the water; Love

 

the key is turned. Extend yourself—

it is the Nile, the sun is shining,

everywhere you turn is luck.
 

OOTORI CHOUTAROU: vita nova

You saved me, you should remember me.

 

The spring of the year; young men buying tickets for the ferryboats.

Laughter, because the air is full of apple blossoms.

 

When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling.

 

I remember sounds like that from my childhood,

laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful

 

KABAJI MUNEHIRO: a summer garden

And in the middle of the sky,

the immodest god.

 

Things are, he says. They are, they do not change;

response does not change.

 

How hushed it is, the stage

as well as the audience; it seems

breathing is an intrusion.

 

He must be very close,

the grass is shadowless.
 

HIYOSHI WAKASHI: vespers [in your extended absence...]

In your extended absence, you permit me

use of earth, anticipating

some return on investment. I must report

failure in my assignment, principally

regarding the tomato plants.

I think I should not be encouraged to grow

tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold

the heavy rains, the cold nights that come

so often here, while other regions get

twelve weeks of summer. All this

belongs to you: on the other hand,

I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots

like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart

broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly

multiplying in the rows.