一握の砂 English

To my friend in Hakodate, Ikuu — Miyazaki Daishiro

and my fellow countryman, Bachelor of Letters Kamei — Kindaichi Kyosuke

I dedicate this collection to you both.

It seems I have already shown you both the whole of myself.

For I believe there is no one who knows more than you two about each and every poem sung here.

And I offer one more copy to my dead son, Shinichi.

It was the morning you were born that I handed the manuscript of this collection to the publisher.

The payment for this collection became your medicine.

And it was the night of your cremation that I looked over its sample proofs.

The Author

From more than a thousand poems written since the summer of Meiji 41, five hundred and fifty-one have been chosen for this collection.

The collection's five chapters are only a provisional grouping, by kinship in the origin of feeling.

"In the Pleasantness of the Autumn Wind"

is a memento of the autumn of Meiji 41.

Songs That Love Me

On the white sand of the beach of a small island in the Eastern Sea

I, wet with weeping,

play with a crab.

Down my cheek it runs—

I do not wipe the tear away,

I do not forget the one who once showed me a handful of sand.

Facing the great sea, alone,

for seven or eight days

I left home, meaning to go and weep.

A badly rusted pistol turned up—

in the dune's

sand, where I'd only been digging with a finger.

Raised overnight when a storm came through—

this dune of sand—

whose grave can it be?

Lying face-down in the sand of the dune,

the ache of a first love

comes back to me today, from far away.

To a piece of driftwood lying at the foot of the dune

I glance around,

and try speaking to it.

Sad, this lifeless sand—

rustling,

it slips through my fingers when I grip it.

Moist,

a grain of sand that drank my tears—

how heavy a thing a tear can be.

The character for "great"—over a hundred times

I wrote it in the sand,

then gave up on dying and came home.

Waking, yet still not getting up—the child's habit,

a sad habit—

mother, don't scold him for it.

Drooling on a lump of earth

I shaped the likeness of my mother's weeping face—

how sad a thing it is.

In a room with no lamplight, I sit—

father and mother

come out from the wall, leaning on their canes.

In jest I carried my mother on my back,

and wept at how light she was—

could not take three steps.

That habit of drifting out of the house

and drifting back again—

my friends laugh, but—

Each time my father back home coughs, do I

cough this way too?—

sickness feels so fleeting.

If the girls heard me crying

they'd say it's like a sick dog

howling at the moon.

Somewhere, faint, like an insect crying,

this thin, forlorn feeling—

I feel it again today.

Into a very dark

hole my heart seems to be drawn—

worn out, I fall asleep.

Let there be, pleasantly,

some work for me to do—

I think to finish it, and then die.

In the corner of a crowded streetcar,

shrinking small—

how dear I am to myself, evening after evening.

Into the night bustle of Asakusa

I slip in,

and slip back out—this lonely heart.

I cut my beloved dog's ear, just to see—

ah, is this too

a heart grown weary of things?

Taking up a mirror

I tried every face I could manage—

when I had wept my fill.

Tears, tears—

how strange it is—

washing with them makes my heart want to clown around.

At my mother's astonished words

I came to myself—

I'd been tapping the rice bowl with my chopsticks.

Lying in the grass,

thinking of nothing—

a bird dropped its dung on my forehead and flew off to play in the sky.

My mustache—

its habit of drooping down infuriates me,

for lately it looks like a man I hate.

From deep in the forest, a gunshot—

ah, ah,

how fine the sound of a man taking his own life.

Ear pressed to the trunk of a great tree,

half the morning—

I'd been picking at its hard bark.

"Will you die over so small a thing?"

"Will you live over so small a thing?"

Enough, enough of this argument.

Rare, this—

in this calm of heart

even the clock's chime I hear with pleasure.

A sudden, deep fear takes hold—

I go still,

then quietly feel for my own navel.

I climbed to the top of a high mountain,

waved my hat for no reason at all,

and came back down.

Somewhere a crowd of people are pushing

as if drawing lots—

I too want to draw.

When I'm angry

I always break one bowl—

let me break nine hundred ninety-nine, then die.

The small man I always meet on the streetcar—

his sharp, hard eyes—

lately they trouble my mind.

Coming before a mirror shop

I was suddenly startled—

is that shabby thing walking there, me?

I only felt, for no reason, like riding a train—

and when I got off

there was nowhere to go.

I went into an empty house

and once smoked a cigarette there—

ah, only wanting to be by myself.

For no reason at all,

I've become a man who goes out walking whenever loneliness comes—

three months now.

In softly drifted snow,

as if burying a burning cheek—

I want to fall in love like that.

Sad it is—

a single, insatiable thought of self

that this man cannot handle.

Both hands and feet

flung out to fill the whole room—

then quietly, at last, I rise again.

As if waking from a hundred-year sleep,

I'd let out a yawn—

with nothing at all on my mind.

Arms folded,

these days I find myself thinking:

let some great enemy leap out before me.

His hand was white

and large besides,

when I met that man they call extraordinary.

Pleasantly,

I found myself wanting to praise someone—

this loneliness of a heart grown weary of its own selfishness.

When it rains

everyone in my house, every one, wears a gloomy face—

oh, let it clear.

With a heart like one about to leap from a great height,

this single life of mine—

is there no way to end it?

These days

a regret has secretly lodged in my chest—

it will not let me laugh.

When I hear flattery

my heart flares with anger—

sad, that I know myself too well.

Pounding on the door of a stranger's house to wake them,

then running off—that was fun once,

how I long for those old days.

Having carried on like some extraordinary man,

the loneliness that follows after—

to what could I compare it?

That huge body of his—

I hated it,

whenever I went and spoke before him.

From one who sees me as a poet,

no use for practical affairs,

I borrowed money.

From far away, the sound of a flute—

is it because my head hangs low

that the tears flow.

"That's fine, this is fine too," says someone—

that lightness of heart

I found myself wanting.

To die—

I think of it as I would of taking my daily medicine.

When my heart aches,

a dog by the roadside gives one long, long yawn—

and I imitate it too.

Out of envy

I turn serious and beat the dog with a stick.

A child's face—

I thought, that's good.

A dynamo's

heavy hum—how pleasant it is.

Ah, if only I could speak like that.

The dead face of my friend, who had such a playful nature—

its pale, weary blue

is still before my eyes.

Serving a fickle-tempered man,

deeply, truly—

I have come to hate my life.

Like a dragon leaping out into the empty sky,

smoke that vanishes—

I never tire of watching it.

What a pleasant tiredness—

without pausing for breath,

this weariness after a stretch of work.

Feigning sleep, half-stifling a yawn—

why do I do it?

So no one guesses what's on my mind.

Chopsticks paused, a thought struck me suddenly:

at last

how used to the world's ways I've grown.

Early in the morning

my younger sister, her marrying age long past—

I read a letter of hers that looked like a love letter.

Moist,

like a sponge that has drunk its fill of water—

I feel a heaviness much like that.

"Die, die," I rage at myself,

then fall silent—

this dark emptiness at the bottom of my heart.

A face like a beast's, mouth opening and closing—

that's all I see

as the man talks on.

Parent and child,

hearts apart, sit quietly facing one another—

is it awkwardness, or what?

On that ship,

I was one passenger among many on that voyage.

That I cannot bring myself to die—

the plate of sweets there in front of me,

I want to crunch it between my teeth,

how maddening this is.

A young man who laughs so easily—

if he were to die,

let this world grow at least a little lonelier.

For no reason at all

I wanted to run until my breath gave out—

across some meadow, perhaps.

Wearing a new suit,

I'll go on a journey—

so, this year too, I only thought it and let it pass.

Putting out the lamp on purpose,

staring into the dark, what I sat thinking about

was nothing at all.

At the top of the Ryounkaku in Asakusa,

the day I stood there with folded arms—

what a long diary entry that made.

Is this just ordinary clowning—

holding a knife, pretending to die,

that face, that face of his.

Whispered talk gradually rises,

a pistol goes off,

and a life comes to its end.

There are times

I play like a child—

a thing no one in love would do.

Somehow I manage to leave the house,

and there is the warmth of sunlight—

I breathe it in deeply.

A weary ox's drool

drips and drips on,

as if it would never run dry in ten million years.

On a cut stone by the roadside,

arms folded,

there was a man looking up at the sky.

What could it be—

with a look that was far from calm,

he watches the men swinging their pickaxes.

From my heart today it has fled away—

like some sickly beast,

my discontent has fled away.

An easy, open-hearted feeling has come to me—

even in walking

it's as if strength were gathering in my belly.

Wanting only to weep alone,

I came and lay down—

how pleasant the inn's bedding felt.

Friend, listen—

do not despise the beggar for his baseness;

when I was starving, I was the same.

The smell of fresh ink—

when I pull the stopper,

it sinks into my starving belly, and how sad that is.

Sad is

enduring the dryness of my throat

as I curl up small in the bedding on a cold night.

Everyone who had ever once made me bow my head—

"let them all die,"

I once prayed.

Two friends who were so like me—

one has died,

one has left prison and now lies sick.

Holding talent to spare,

yet for his wife's sake

my friend is worn with worry—I grieve for him.

Having spoken frankly, holding nothing back,

feeling somehow as if I'd been cheated of something,

I parted from my friend.

Dull and heavy,

I was watching the clouded sky,

when I found I wanted to kill someone.

No more than an ordinary talent—

my friend's,

and yet how pitiful his deep discontent.

A man not one soul could find anything good in came,

swaggered about, and went home—

how sad a thing it is.

I work and work,

and still my life won't grow any easier—

I stare hard at my hands.

As if I could see everything that lies ahead,

this sadness—

I cannot wipe it all away.

On a certain day,

the way one aches unbearably for drink—

today I craved money, desperately.

Playing with a crystal ball, delighted—

this heart of mine,

what kind of heart is it?

Nothing happens,

and pleasantly I grow fatter—

how unsatisfying these days of mine.

A great crystal ball—

I want just one,

to sit before it and lose myself in thought.

To a self-satisfied friend

I nod along,

with a heart like one dispensing charity.

At the edge of waking from a sad dream one morning,

it came into my nose—

the smell of miso simmering.

Tock, tock—the sound of stone being chiseled in a vacant lot

stayed fixed in my ear,

all the way until I got home.

For no reason at all,

there's a cliff inside my head,

and every day it feels as if earth crumbles from it.

Like a telephone bell ringing far away,

my ears ring again today—

what a sad day it is.

The grimy collar of my lined kimono—

and, sadly,

it smells of walnuts roasting, back home.

There are times I ache to die—

hiding from others' eyes in the privy,

I make a fearsome face.

Seeing off a company of soldiers,

I felt such sadness—

why do they seem so free of any care?

The faces of my countrymen look unbearably base

on a day like this—

let me shut myself away at home.

I'll spend my next holiday, one whole day, just lying in bed—

so I thought, and let it pass.

These three years now,

there are times my heart, I've thought,

resembled fresh-baked

bread, straight from the oven.

Pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat—

the raindrops

echo in my aching head, how sad it is.

One day,

I repapered the shoji in my room,

and that alone was enough to soothe my heart.

Thinking I couldn't just stay like this,

I rose to my feet—

but until a horse whinnied outside

I stood there in the corridor, all the will gone out of me.

I shoved the door roughly,

and since it opened at once,

I just stood there still.

Having soaked up ink, black or red,

I look at the sponge, gone hard and dry.

One that would make anyone who read it

grow fond of me somehow—

an evening I want to write a long letter.

Pale green—

they say if you drink it, your body turns clear as water—

is there no such medicine?

Grown tired of the lamp I always glare at,

for three days or so

I've kept company with candlelight instead.

Words that no human being uses—

by some chance,

a day I think that only I know them.

Seeking after some new state of heart,

through streets whose names I don't even know,

I came wandering again today.

A day when every friend of mine looks greater than I am!

I bought flowers and brought them home,

and grew close with my wife.

Why is it

that I am here, in this place?—

at times, startled like this, I stare about the room.

There was a man who spat inside the streetcar—

even at that,

my heart very nearly ached.

I want a place to while away the hours until dawn—

when I think of home,

my heart turns cold.

The sadness that everyone else has a home!

As if climbing into a grave,

I go back and sleep.

Show some one wonder,

and while everyone stands amazed,

vanish—that's what I think of doing.

In the heart of every single person

a prisoner dwells, one apiece,

and how sad, their groaning.

Scolded,

a child's heart bursts into tears—

how I wish I could be that heart again.

A heart that can't even think stealing wrong—

how sad such a heart is,

with not even a hiding place to call its own.

A sadness like that of a woman just set free—

a weak man

feels it, on a day like this.

Onto a garden stone

I once flung down my watch in an instant—

how dear that old anger of mine seems now.

The thing that made my face flush with anger—

the very next day

I find it lonely, how little it really mattered.

O restless, irritable heart, how sad a thing you are—

come now, come now,

let me give a little yawn.

There is a woman

who wears her heart out trying never to cross me—

to see it is sad.

Spineless,

the women of my Japan—

I railed at them on a night of autumn rain.

Born a man, keeping company with men,

I keep on losing—

is that why autumn sinks so deep into me?

All the thoughts I carry

seem to trace back to having no money—

the autumn wind blows.

A man delighted at having written some worthless novel—

how pitiful he is—

the wind of early autumn.

The autumn wind—

from today on, to that flabby man

I've resolved not to speak.

With no end in sight,

as if walking a street straight and true—

such a heart I managed to hold today.

Thinking of nothing at all,

kept busy all day—

such a day I don't want to forget.

Laughing that everything comes down to money, money,

then, a little while later,

discontent suddenly wells up in me again.

Someone—

shoot me, even with a pistol—

let me die like Ito, and show them how.

With just a start—

I woke from a dream that Prime Minister Katsura had taken my hand,

two o'clock on an autumn night.

Smoke

I

Like an illness,

a day when homesickness wells up in my heart—

to my eyes, smoke against the blue sky looks sad.

Faintly calling my own name

I wept once—

there is no way back to that spring at fourteen.

Smoke vanishing into the blue sky,

smoke vanishing, so lonely—

is it like me?

The conductor on that train, that journey—

quite unexpectedly

turned out to be a friend from my middle-school days.

The gushing water of the pump—

how pleasant it is—

for a while I watch it with a young man's heart.

Neither teacher nor friend understood, and blamed me for it—

resembling a riddle,

the true cause behind my neglect of my studies.

Slipping out through the classroom window,

all alone,

I went off to sleep at that old castle ruin.

In the grass of Kozukata Castle, I lay stretched out,

and was drawn up into the sky—

my heart at fifteen.

If you'd call it sadness, sadness it might well be—

the flavor of things—

I tasted it far, far too early.

Whenever I looked up at a clear sky

I always wanted to whistle,

and whistled away at play.

Even lying down at night, I whistled—

whistling

was the song of my fifteen-year-old self.

There was a teacher who scolded us often—

for his beard, we nicknamed him Goat,

and mimicked the way he talked.

There with me,

throwing stones at little birds for play,

was the son of a reserve army captain too.

At the castle ruin,

sitting on a stone,

I once tasted, all alone, a forbidden fruit.

Even the friend who later abandoned me—

back in those days we read books together

and played together too.

The autumn grass behind the school's book storehouse—

yellow flowers bloomed there,

and even now I don't know their name.

When the blossoms scattered,

was it I who, before anyone else, put on a white uniform and left the house—

was that really me?

With the younger brother of my sister's lover, she who is dead now,

I had been close—

and I find that sad.

When summer vacation ended, and just like that

he never came back—

there was a young English teacher too.

Even when I recall that strike,

my blood no longer stirs the way it did—

a quiet loneliness in that.

At the Morioka middle school,

on the balcony,

let me lean against that railing just once more.

The friend who insisted there was a God—

I argued him down,

there under that chestnut tree by the road.

In the west wind,

the cherry leaves of Uchimaru Avenue

rustled down, and I played, stepping on them.

That book I loved to read, back then—

for the most part

has fallen out of fashion by now.

Like a single stone

rolling down a slope,

I have arrived at this day of mine.

With a sorrowful boy's eyes I envied them,

the little birds in flight,

flying, and singing as they flew.

The earthworm I once dissected—

its life too was a sad thing.

There, beneath the wooden fence around that schoolyard,

my eyes burning with a boundless hunger for knowledge—

my sister grieved to see them.

Wondering if I was pining for someone,

the friend who once recommended me Soho's book

left school early.

Because of his poverty

his clownish gestures, which I thought funny—

I alone always laughed at them.

A learned teacher—

the story of a man undone by his own talent,

he used to tell us,

such a teacher there was too.

The biggest slacker the school ever had, back then—

now, earnestly,

he is hard at work.

His country-looking traveling clothes

put on display in the capital for three days or so,

and my friend went home again.

Along the pine-lined avenue at Barajima,

the girl who walked there with me

trusted in her own talent.

When my eyes were ailing and I wore dark glasses—

it was in those days

that I first learned to weep alone.

My heart

is about to weep in secret again today.

All my friends walk their own paths now—

but ahead of them, love's sweetness

and its sadness, I was the one who came to know first.

and I grow old before them too.

When the mood takes him,

my friend, tears falling, waving his hands about,

talks on like a man who's had too much to drink.

Pushing his way through the crowd, he comes—

my friend's,

his thick cane, just the same as always.

As someone who writes fine-looking New Year's cards,

I once thought of him, and let it go.

For three years now,

waking from a dream, I'm suddenly struck with sadness—

my sleep

no longer as untroubled as it once was.

The friend once famed, long ago, as a brilliant student

is in prison now—

the autumn wind blows.

Nearsighted,

he who used to compose comic poems—

was Shigeo's love a sad thing too?

My wife's old wish, once,

had to do with music—

now she does not sing.

All my friends scattered off in every direction one day,

and in the eight years since,

not one has made a name for himself.

My love—

the night I first told a friend about it,

a day I find myself remembering.

Like a kite whose string has snapped,

the heart of my young days, so light,

has flown away.

II

The accent of home, how dear to me—

into the crowd at the station

I go, just to hear it.

Like some sickly animal,

my heart—

grows quiet and gentle at the mention of home.

Suddenly it strikes me—

the chirping of sparrows I used to hear every day back home,

I haven't heard it now for three years.

What my teacher, now dead, once,

long ago, had given me—

a geography book, I take it out and look through it.

Long ago,

the ball I once threw onto the shingled roof of my primary school—

whatever became of it, I wonder.

Back home,

that abandoned stone by the roadside—

this year too, it must be buried in grass.

How dear my little sister is, now that we're apart—

she was the child who used to wail

for clogs with red thongs, that sort of thing.

Two days ago I saw a painting of mountains,

and now, this morning,

I suddenly long for the mountains of home.

When I hear the candy-seller's horn,

it's as if the childhood heart I'd lost

were picked up again.

These days

my mother too, now and then, brings up things about home—

autumn has come.

Casually,

she brings up talk of home,

and there's the smell of rice cakes toasting on an autumn night.

However it may be, Shibutami village is dear to me—

the mountain of memory,

the river of memory.

Selling off field and paddy to buy drink,

toward the people of my home village, going to ruin—

a day my heart goes out to them.

Ah, those children I once taught—

they too, in time,

will likely abandon home and go.

For children who have left their home village,

meeting one another again—

no sadness outweighs that joy.

As if driven out by stones thrown after me,

the sadness of leaving home

never has a moment it fades.

Softly green with willows,

the banks of the Kitakami rise before my eyes,

as if telling me to weep.

Back home,

even the modest coiled hair of the village doctor's wife—

how dear it all is.

There was a man who came to work at that village's registry office,

fell ill with consumption,

and died not long after.

The friend who once rivaled me for first place at primary school—

he now runs

a flophouse for travelers.

Chiyoji and the rest have grown up now, and fallen in love,

and had children—

as if doing exactly what I did, out on my travels.

At the Bon festival, one year,

"I'll lend you a robe, come dance," she said—

I think of that woman.

With a dim-witted older brother

and a crippled father—poor Santa, how sad his lot.

Reading books even into the night,

and together with me

once racing his chestnut colt—

that motherless boy's habit of stealing, how sad.

The red flowers patterned on her big cloak—

I can still see them before my eyes—

love, at six years old.

By the time even his name had been forgotten,

he drifted back into the village,

a man with a cough.

Even the mean-spirited carpenter's son—how sad that story too.

He went off to war,

but did not come home alive—

another one, ill with the lungs.

On the day the wastrel landlord's eldest son took a bride,

what a clap of spring thunder there was.

To Sojiro

Okane weeps and pleads,

white radish blossoms in the evening dusk.

Of the timid clerk at the village office

a rumor spread that he'd lost his mind—

autumn, back home.

My cousin,

after he'd tired of hunting the hills and fields,

took to drink, sold his house, fell ill, and died.

When I went and took his hand,

he wept, and grew calm.

A friend from those days who turned violent when drunk—

and there was even a teacher who, once drinking,

would draw a sword and chase his wife.

was driven out of the village.

As the sufferers of consumption grow more numerous every year,

the village took in

a young doctor.

Firefly hunting—

when I said let's go down to the river,

there was one who lured me up a mountain path instead.

Rain falling on the pale violet flowers of the potato plants—

I find myself thinking of that rain

in the rain of the capital.

Ah, this nostalgia of mine—

like gold,

it shines in my heart, pure and through and through.

With no one to play with as a friend,

the ill-tempered policeman's children too—

how sad they were.

The cuckoo—

they say it comes on when it calls,

whatever became of my friend's sickness, I wonder.

What I think

is, for the most part, right.

On the morning a letter arrives from home,

today I hear

that the widow with such scant luck

has thrown herself into some sordid love affair, they say.

For my sake,

to calm my troubled soul,

there was someone who sang a hymn.

Ah, a soul like that man's—

where is it now,

and what is it thinking?

The white azaleas in my garden,

on a night of pale moonlight—

don't forget how you broke them off, and left.

In my village,

the one who first preached the way of Jesus Christ

was a young woman.

In the deep fog of the Koma plain,

at the station,

how restless the morning insects sounded.

Through the train window,

when far to the north the mountains of home come into view,

I straighten my collar.

When I set foot on the soil of home,

for no reason at all my feet grow light,

while my heart grows heavy.

Entering my home village, the first thing is, my heart aches.

The road has grown wider,

and the bridge is new.

A woman teacher I've never seen before

stands there now, at the window

of what was once my old schoolhouse.

It was at that house, that very window,

on a spring night,

that I listened to the frogs with Hideko.

That old name, "child prodigy"—

how sad it is—

it's for that I weep, coming home.

On the road to the station back home,

by the riverside,

I picked up small stones under the walnut tree.

Facing the mountains of home,

there is nothing to say—

the mountains of home, how I am grateful for them.

In the pleasantness of the autumn wind,

is it that the sky back home feels so very far?

Climbing alone up to some high place,

I come back down, full of sorrow.

Even a petty man, gleaming bright enough to shame a jewel—

told that autumn has come,

he too falls into thought.

Sad indeed—

the autumn wind, that is.

Tears that once welled up only rarely now flow thick and fast—

clear and blue, transparent,

pillowed on this jewel of sorrow,

I listen to the sound of the pines the whole night through.

The cedars of the seven hills, hushed and sacred,

dyed like fire—the sun has set.

How quiet it is—

when I read it,

this book that they say teaches one to know sorrow, burns bright within me—

how fine the hearts of the people of old.

Everything, every last thing, looking fragile and forlorn,

faded into dusk.

On a day when every sorrow seems gathered together,

a puddle of rainwater

floats the darkening sky, and a ribbon of crimson.

After the autumn rain,

does the coming of autumn resemble water somehow?

Washed clean,

every single thought of mine turns new.

Sorrow came over me,

and when I climbed the hill,

a bird whose name I didn't know was pecking red bramble berries.

An autumn crossroads—

of the wind that blows from where four roads meet, off down three of them,

no trace at all can be seen.

The voice of autumn is always the first thing to reach my ear—

such is the nature I was born with,

how sad, to be born this way.

Though it's a mountain my eyes have long grown used to,

when autumn comes,

I gaze at it in awe, wondering if a god lives there.

As if everything I might do in this world had run out,

through the long day,

must I brood so sorrowfully, like this?

Rain comes pattering softly down,

and watching the garden's surface grow wet,

I forgot my tears.

In the corridor of the temple back home,

the one I once walked upon,

I dreamed of a small comb shaped like a butterfly.

Just to see,

becoming again the child I once was,

I wish there were someone I could try talking to.

Rustling, the millet leaves clatter—

how dear the eaves of home,

when the autumn wind blows.

From between shoulders that brushed together in passing,

even the claim that I caught the faintest glimpse of her

remains written in my diary.

The man of refined taste, now as in ages past,

seems to grow old

on nights her snow-white arms are wrapped around him.

if only I could, if just for a moment, forget it all and try.

Stone paving,

as if buried now in grass grown up with spring—

she who, long ago, lay in a cradle,

the one I dreamed of, so many times—

how keenly dear she is to me.

The Godless Month—

of the mountains of Iwate,

I remember the morning the first snow pressed close to their brows.

A sun-shower falls, softly, softly,

and in the garden plot

the bush clover is left a little tousled.

The autumn sky, vast and hollow, without even a shadow—

too lonely, this.

Let a crow fly, at least—

the moon after rain.

The roof tiles, just moderately wet,

shining here and there—how sad that is.

On a day when I was starving,

wagging its thin tail—

the hungry dog gazing up at me—how good its face looked.

Somewhere along the way,

I've forgotten how to weep—

is there no one left who could make me cry?

Streaming with tears,

ah, the sadness of drink has come over me—

let me rise up and dance.

Crickets are crying—

crouched on the stone beside them,

weeping and laughing, I talk to myself.

Ever since the days I lay weak with illness,

sleeping with my mouth just slightly open

has become a habit of mine.

A thing no more than winning the heart of one single person—

that I made into my great ambition,

the folly of my youth.

That sulking,

that soft upward glance of hers—

shall I turn extra cold, just because I love it so?

Tears as hot as these—

were there even on the day of my first love, I wonder—

there is no other day I weep so.

As if meeting a friend

forgotten so long, so very long—

with just that joy I listen to the sound of water.

On an autumn night,

in the great sky, colored like steel,

I find myself wishing there were a volcano, spouting fire.

Mount Iwate—

in autumn, the fields spreading round three sides of its foot,

how must it hear the insects filling them?

Like a father, autumn is stern;

like a mother, autumn is dear.

To a child with no home of his own,

when autumn comes,

how ceaseless the yearning of his heart.

Hardly able to sleep at night, I hear the wild geese, so many of them—

the ninth month already half gone.

Until when,

must I remain this childish, unable to speak my mind?

From someone who never says what she's thinking,

that came sent to me—

forget-me-nots, so vivid and clear.

Like a bow too quick to spring back in the autumn rain,

these days

you have not been close to me, have you.

The wind in the pines echoes on, day and night,

at the mountain shrine no one visits,

into the ear of a stone horse.

The faint fragrance of rotting wood,

and within it the fragrance of mushrooms—

autumn has grown a little deeper.

With a sound like passing showers,

they moved from tree to tree—

the forest monkeys, so much like men.

Deep in the forest,

a distant echo sounds—

have I wandered into some land of dwarves, grinding their mill in a hollow tree?

At the world's beginning,

first there was forest,

and within it, some half-divine man, tending a fire, perhaps.

Endlessly the sand stretches on—

whatever god dwells in the wastes of the Gobi

must be a god of autumn.

Between heaven and earth,

my sorrow and the moonlight

have become one boundless autumn night.

Forlorn,

gathering up the night sounds that leaked through to me,

as if picking them up, I wandered on.

Like a wandering child

come home at last, and fallen asleep—

how truly quietly winter has come.

People I Cannot Forget

I

On the northern shore, fragrant with the tide,

that wild rose on the dune—

has it bloomed again this year?

Counting up the youthful years I once relied on,

staring at my fingers,

I grew sick of traveling.

Three times or so

I'd gazed at them from the train window—even the names of those towns

had come to feel familiar.

The barber's apprentice in Hakodate—

I found myself remembering him,

how pleasant it was, having him shave round my ears.

Following after me,

to some remote land where they knew not a soul,

my mother and my wife came to live.

Grown seasick, and turned gentle—

I see my little sister's eyes.

When I think of the Tsugaru Strait,

I close my eyes.

Reciting some verse of heartbreak—

how sad and comic, my friend's letter was.

When we were children,

we smeared dung on the bridge railing—

even that story, my friend told with sadness.

"I'll probably never take a wife, my whole life long,"

laughed my friend—

and even now, he remains unwed.

Ah, that one—

whose spectacle rims glinted so forlornly—

that woman teacher.

My friend once gave me food to eat,

and I, who turned my back on that very friend—

how sad a nature is mine.

Aoyagi-cho in Hakodate, how sad it is—

my friend's love song,

the flower of the columbine.

Of my home village,

I long for the fragrance of the wheat.

I was drawn, heart and soul, to a woman's eyebrows.

The scent of the paper of a brand-new foreign book—

I breathed it in,

and wished, single-mindedly, for money.

Where white waves come rushing in, loud and restless,

on Omori Beach in Hakodate—

all the things I used to think about.

Every single morning

it would strike up some Chinese popular tune—

how sad, that I loved my little bedside clock so.

The draft that tried, and failed, to put into words the sorrow of wandering—

its characters

how hard they are to read now.

So many times I tried to die,

and never died—

the path I've walked, comic and sad both.

Halfway up Gagyu Hill in Hakodate,

even the Chinese verse carved on the monument there—

I've half forgotten it now.

Mumbling, mumbling,

muttering something that sounded solemn under his breath—

there was a beggar like that too.

As if telling me to think of him as a man not worth a thought,

he went off into the mountains.

A friend like a god.

A cigarette held in her mouth,

amid the rough waves,

she stood in the shore's night mist, that woman.

In a lull between military drills, going out of his way,

he rode the train

to visit me—that drink we shared together.

Every time I look at the surface of the great river,

Ikuu,

I think of your troubles.

Wisdom, and a compassion so deep,

that he couldn't quite manage—

with nothing to do, my friend just drifted through his days.

For people whose ambitions never came true,

the place they gathered to drink together

was my own house.

Whenever sad, he'd laugh out loud—

with drink

he'd dissolve his torment, that older friend of mine used to say.

Though still young,

my friend had already become father to several children—

yet when drunk, he'd sing as if he had none.

That offhand, loud laugh of his,

together with the drink,

seems to have sunk deep into my very guts.

Biting back a yawn,

we said our goodbyes there at the night train's window—

that farewell feels somehow unsatisfying to me now.

On the rain-wet window of the night train,

reflected there,

the color of the lights of some town among the mountains.

On a night when rain fell hard on the train,

the window glass, down which drops kept streaming

without a pause.

At midnight,

a woman got off at Kutchan Station—

the old scar there at her temple.

In Sapporo,

the sorrow I carried with me that autumn,

and carry with me even now.

In the acacia trees lining the street, in the poplars,

the autumn wind—

that it blows is sad, so I wrote once in my diary.

In the hush of a broad street,

on an autumn night,

the smell of corn roasting.

In the quarrel of the two sisters at my lodging house,

the first hours of the night slipped by—

rain, in Sapporo.

At the station in Ishikari called Bikuni,

hung out to dry on the fence,

a red scrap of cloth.

Sad is the town of Otaru—

the people there never sing,

and how rough their voices are.

Trembling his head as if he were weeping,

"let me see your palm," he said—

there was such a fortune-teller too.

Having borrowed a little money from me and gone off,

my friend—

the snow on the shoulders of his retreating back.

My clumsiness at making my way in the world—

was it not I myself

who, secretly, took a kind of pride in it?

"That thin, wasted body of yours is nothing

but a lump of rebellious spirit,"

I was once told.

That year, in that newspaper,

the one who wrote the piece about the first snow

was I.

The friend who braced himself, chair raised, to strike me down—

his drunkenness too

must, by now, have worn off.

It was I who lost, too,

and I who caused the quarrel too—

that's what I think, now.

When he said he'd strike me,

"go on, then, strike me," I said, pressing close—

how dear that old self of mine seems now.

"Three times you

held a blade to this throat of mine,"

he said, in his parting words.

Having quarreled,

and parted in bitter hatred—

the day has come when I find myself missing that friend.

Ah, that boy with the fine, high brow—

when I called him "little brother,"

he gave the faintest smile, but

There was a friend who once had my wife sew clothes for him,

in that colony

where winter comes early.

With the flat of his hand

he wiped his face, wet from the blizzard—

my friend, who held communism as his creed.

When he drank, he'd turn pale as a demon—

that huge face,

that sad face of his.

Going off into Sakhalin

to found some new religion, he said—

that was the kind of friend he was.

"Sick of how uneventful

this settled world has become," he said—

that was the saddest time of all.

Opening a pharmacy together,

he talked of making money—that was my friend.

Accused of fraud,

tears shining on his pale, sallow cheeks,

he spoke of dying.

A young merchant.

Carrying our child on her back,

at a station where the snow blew in,

I saw her off—my wife's eyebrows, how I remember them.

With the friend I had hated as an enemy,

I shook hands a little longer than I meant to.

At the moment of parting,

from the window of the train just lurching into motion,

that I pulled my face back first—

so as not to be the one who lost.

Sleet falling—

on the train across the plains of Ishikari, what I read

was a story by Turgenev.

Imagining the talk that would follow after I'd gone,

how sad, this setting out on a journey.

As if going off to die,

having said my goodbyes, when I suddenly blinked,

quite unexpectedly,

something cold ran down my cheek.

I think of the cigarettes I'd left behind, forgotten.

On and on we go,

the train crossing a snowy plain, mountains still far off.

Flowing faint crimson over the snow,

the light of the setting sun

shone through the window of the train, across the wide wilderness.

My stomach had begun to ache a little,

and bearing it in silence,

I smoked a cigarette there on the long train ride.

The scabbard of the sword

of the artillery officer riding along with me

clattered, and broke into my thoughts.

In a land I knew only by name, with no tie to me at all,

the inn was cheap—

and felt, somehow, like my own home.

That Diet member who traveled along with me—

his pale, open-mouthed sleeping face,

I found it a sad thing to look at.

Thinking that tonight I would weep to my heart's content,

I checked into an inn—

and how lukewarm the tea was there.

Water vapor,

frozen on the train window into shapes like flowers,

dyed with the color of dawn.

After the wintry wind had roared past,

dry snow rose up, dancing,

and wrapped the woods in white.

The Sorachi River, buried under snow—

not even a bird to be seen.

In the woods along the bank there stood a single man.

Taking loneliness as both enemy and friend,

there in the snow,

some people spend a whole long life.

Worn out deeply by the train, and even so,

the fragments of thought that kept coming to me

were of how dear I am to myself.

Calling out station names as if singing,

gentle,

I still remember the eyes of that young station worker.

In the snow,

here and there a roof appears,

and thin smoke from a chimney wanders, lost, into the sky.

From far away,

sounding its whistle long and low,

the train now enters a stretch of forest.

Thinking of nothing at all,

day after day,

I let my heart drift along with the sound of the train.

Stepping down at the farthest station of all,

in the glow of the snow,

I walked on into a lonely town.

Pale and gleaming, the ice,

plovers crying—

the winter moon over the sea at Kushiro.

Holding the frozen bottle of ink

up to the fire's warmth—

tears flowed, there beneath the lamp.

His face, his voice—

only those unchanged from the old days—I met such a friend too.

At the far edge of the country—

ah, there at that far edge of the country,

I drank.

As if sipping the dregs of sorrow itself,

when I drink, sadness wells up all at once—

That I slept, and did not dream—

that alone I counted as happiness.

A woman's laugh, sudden and unexpected,

sank deep into me.

At midnight, when the sake freezes in the kitchen,

grieving over how drunk I'd become,

there was a woman who would not sing, but

whatever became of her, I wonder.

The woman they called Koyakko—

her soft

earlobes too, I cannot forget them.

Pressing close beside me,

standing there in the snow, deep in the night—

how warm that woman's hand was.

When I asked, "don't you want to die?",

"look at this," she said,

and showed me the scar on her throat.

In her artistry, and in her looks,

better than that other woman—

she's said to have spoken ill of me, I hear.

When I said, "dance," she rose and danced.

Naturally,

waiting until I'd all but collapsed, drunk on bad liquor,

as if waiting for me to drink myself to death,

all manner