無我の境地: LOUISE GLÜCK TINHATTERYの極み IV

[rhodochrosite]

misc highrankers edition ft seigaku, higa, st rudolph, fudomine

recap: rikkai, shitenhoji, hyotei


TEZUKA KUNIMITSU: afterword

Bravo! the door is shut.

Now nothing escapes, nothing enters—

I hadn't moved. I felt the desert

stretching ahead, stretching (it now seems)

on all sides, shifting as I speak,

so that I was constantly

face to face with blankness, that

stepchild of the sublime,

which, it turns out,

has been both my subject and my medium
//

Shall I be raised from death, the spirit asks.

And the sun says yes.

And the desert answers

your voice is sand scattered in wind.

FUJI SHUSUKE: portrait

A child draws the outline of a body.

She draws what she can, but it is white all through,

she cannot fill in what she knows is there.

Within the unsupported line, she knows

that life is missing; she has cut

one background from another. Like a child,

she turns to her mother.

And you draw the heart

against the emptiness she has created.

ECHIZEN RYOMA: radium

Then I didn't want to wake up. I didn't want

the leaves turning, the nights turning dark early.

//

And then fall was gone, the year was gone.

We were changing, we were growing up. But

it wasn't something you decided to do;

it was something that happened, something

you couldn't control.


OISHI SHUICHIRO + KIKUMARU EIJI: vespers [end of august...]

End of August. Heat

like a tent over

John's garden. And some things

have the nerve to be getting started,

clusters of tomatoes, stands

of late lilies—optimism

of the great stalks—imperial

gold and silver: but why

start anything

so close to the end?

Tomatoes that will never ripen, lilies

winter will kill, that won't

come back in spring. Or

are you thinking

I spend too much time

looking ahead, like

an old woman wearing

sweaters in summer;

are you saying I can

flourish, having

no hope

of enduring?


KITE EISHIRO: the empty glass

And it occurs to me that what is crucial is to believe

in effort, to believe some good will come of simply trying,

a good completely untainted by the corrupt initiating impulse

to persuade or seduce—

//

What do we have really?

Sad tricks with ladders and shoes,

tricks with salt, impurely motivated recurring

attempts to build character.

What do we have to appease the great forces?

MIZUKI HAJIME: hyacinth

There is no other immortality:

in the cold spring, the purple violets open.

And yet, the heart is black,

there is its violence frankly exposed.

Or is it not the heart at the center

but some other word?

FUJI YUUTA: the garden

And the willows—

See how it has shaped these green

Tents of silence. Yet

There is still something you need,

Your body so soft, so alive, among the stone animals.

Admit that it is terrible to be like them,

Beyond harm.

TACHIBANA KIPPEI: snowdrop

Do you know what I was, how I lived?
//
I did not expect to survive,

earth suppressing me. I didn’t expect

to waken again, to feel

in damp earth my body

able to respond again, remembering

after so long how to open again

in the cold light

of earliest spring—

afraid, yes, but among you again

crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

Comments

[latespring]

!!!!!! both of the fujis are so good, i love yuuta's-- "Admit that it is terrible to be like them, / Beyond harm." is so very him

[rhodochrosite]

ty em!! ^__^ i love fujis awareness of his lack of motivation to win... and i always find it incredibly [eyemoji] that yuuta continues to follow and believe in mizuki even after learning that mizuki.. hm... did not have his best interests at heart lol