Only beyond the still grey shoji
For the breadth of innumerable countries,
Is the sea with ships asleep
In the blue-black starless night.
For the breadth of innumerable countries,
Is the sea with ships asleep
In the blue-black starless night.
John Fletcher - Japanese Prints
_Lovers Embracing_
Force and yielding meet together:
An attack is half repulsed.
Shafts of broken sunlight dissolving
Convolutions of torpid cloud.
_A Picnic Under the Cherry Trees_
The boat drifts to rest
Under the outward spraying branches.
There is faint sound of quavering strings,
The reedy murmurs of a flute,
The soft sigh of the wind through silken garments;
All these are mingled
With the breeze that drifts away,
Filled with thin petals of cherry blossom,
Like tinkling laughter dancing away in sunlight.
_Court Lady Standing Under Cherry Tree_
She is an iris,
Dark purple, pale rose,
Under the gnarled boughs
That shatter their stars of bloom.
She waves delicately
With the movement of the tree.
Of what is she dreaming?
Of long nights lit with orange lanterns,
Of wine cups and compliments and kisses of the two-sword men.
And of dawn when weary sleepers
Lie outstretched on the mats of the palace,
And of the iris stalk that is broken in the fountain.
_Court Lady Standing Under a Plum Tree_
Autumn winds roll through the dry leaves
On her garments;
Autumn birds shiver
Athwart star-hung skies.
Under the blossoming plum-tree,
She expresses the pilgrimage
Of grey souls passing,
Athwart love's scarlet maples
To the ash-strewn summit of death.
_A Beautiful Woman_
Iris-amid-clouds
Must be her name.
Tall and lonely as the mountain-iris,
Cold and distant.
She has never known longing:
Many have died for love of her.
_A Reading_
"And the prince came to the craggy rock
But saw only hissing waves
So he rested all day amid them. "
He listens idly,
He is content with her voice.
He dreams it is the murmur
Of distant wave-caps breaking
Upon the painted screen.
_An Actor as a Dancing Girl_
The peony dancer
Swirls orange folds of dusty robes
Through the summer.
They are spotted with thunder showers,
Falling upon the crimson petals.
Heavy blooms
Breaking and spilling fiery cups
Drowsily.
_Josan No Miya_
She is a fierce kitten leaping in sunlight
Towards the swaying boughs.
She is a gust of wind,
Bending in parallel curves the boughs of the willow-tree.
_An Oiran and her Kamuso_
Gilded hummingbirds are whizzing
Through the palace garden,
Deceived by the jade petals
Of the Emperor's jewel-trees.
_Two Ways of Love_
The wind half blows her robes,
That subside
Listlessly
As swaying pines.
The wind tosses hers
In circles
That recoil upon themselves:
How should I love--as the swaying or tossing wind?
_Kurenai-ye or "Red Picture"_
She glances expectantly
Through the pine avenue,
To the cherry-tree summit
Where her lover will appear.
Faint rose anticipation colours her,
And sunset;
She is a cherry-tree that has taken long to bloom.
_A Woman Standing by a Gate with an Umbrella_
Late summer changes to autumn:
Chrysanthemums are scattered
Behind the palings.
Gold and vermilion
The afternoon.
I wait here dreaming of vermilion sunsets:
In my heart is a half fear of the chill autumn rain.
_Scene from a Drama_
The daimyo and the courtesan
Compliment each other.
He invites her to walk out through the maples,
She half refuses, hiding fear in her heart.
Far in the shadow
The daimyo's attendant waits,
Nervously fingering his sword.
_A Woman in Winter Costume_
She is like the great rains
That fall over the earth in winter-time.
Wave on wave her heavy robes collapse
In green torrents
Lashed with slaty foam.
Downward the sun strikes amid them
And enkindles a lone flower;
A violet iris standing yet in seething pools of grey.
_A Pedlar_
Gaily he offers
Packets of merchandise.
He is a harlequin of illusions,
His nimble features
Skip into smiles, like rainbows,
Cheating the villagers.
But in his heart all the while is another knowledge,
The sorrow of the bleakness of the long wet winter night.
_Kiyonobu and Kiyomasu Contrasted_
One life is a long summer;
Tall hollyhocks stand proud upon its paths;
Little yellow waves of sunlight,
Bring scarlet butterflies.
Another life is a brief autumn,
Fierce storm-rack scrawled with lightning
Passed over it
Leaving the naked bleeding earth,
Stabbed with the swords of the rain.
_An Actor_
He plots for he is angry,
He sneers for he is bold.
He clinches his fist
Like a twisted snake;
Coiling itself, preparing to raise its head,
Above the long grasses of the plain.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_Part II_
_Memory and Forgetting_
I have forgotten how many times he kissed me,
But I cannot forget
A swaying branch--a leaf that fell
To earth.
_Pillar-Print, Masonobu_
He stands irresolute
Cloaking the light of his lantern.
Tonight he will either find new love or a sword-thrust,
But his soul is troubled with ghosts of old regret.
Like vines with crimson flowers
They climb
Upwards
Into his heart.
_The Young Daimyo_
When he first came out to meet me,
He had just been girt with the two swords;
And I found he was far more interested in the glitter of their hilts,
And did not even compare my kiss to a cherry-blossom.
_Masonubu--Early_
She was a dream of moons, of fluttering handkerchiefs,
Of flying leaves, of parasols,
A riddle made to break my heart;
The lightest impulse
To her was more dear than the deep-toned temple bell.
She fluttered to my sword-hilt an instant,
And then flew away;
But who will spend all day chasing a butterfly?
_The Beautiful Geisha_
Swift waves hissing
Under the moonlight;
Tarnished silver.
Swaying boats
Under the moonlight,
Gold lacquered prows.
Is it a vision
Under the moonlight?
No, it is only
A beautiful geisha swaying down the street.
_A Young Girl_
Out of the rings and the bubbles,
The curls and the swirls of the water,
Out of the crystalline shower of drops shattered in play,
Her body and her thoughts arose.
She dreamed of some lover
To whom she might offer her body
Fresh and cool as a flower born in the rain.
[Illustration]
_The Heavenly Poetesses_
In their bark of bamboo reeds
The heavenly poetesses
Float across the sky.
Poems are falling from them
Swift as the wind that shakes the lance-like bamboo leaves;
The stars close around like bubbles
Stirred by the silver oars of poems passing.
_The Old Love and the New_
Beware, for the dying vine can hold
The strongest oak.
Only by cutting at the root
Can love be altered.
Late in the night
A rosy glimmer yet defies the darkness.
But the evening is growing late,
The blinds are being lowered;
She who held your heart and charmed you
Is only a rosy glimmer of flame remembered.
_Fugitive Thoughts_
My thoughts are sparrows passing
Through one great wave that breaks
In bubbles of gold on a black motionless rock.
_Disappointment_
Rain rattles on the pavement,
Puddles stand in the bluish stones;
Afar in the Yoshiwara
Is she who holds my heart.
Alas, the torn lantern of my hope
Trembles and sputters in the rain.
_The Traitor_
I saw him pass at twilight;
He was a dark cloud travelling
Over palace roofs
With one claw drooping.
In his face were written ages
Of patient treachery
And the knowledge of his hour.
One dainty thrust, no more
Than this, he needs.
_The Fop_
His heart is like a wind
Torn between cloud and butterfly;
Whether he will roll passively to one,
Or chase endlessly the other.
_Changing Love_
My love for her at first was like the smoke that drifts
Across the marshes
From burning woods.
But, after she had gone,
It was like the lotus that lifts up
Its heart shaped buds from the dim waters.
_In Exile_
My heart is mournful as thunder moving
Through distant hills
Late on a long still night of autumn.
My heart is broken and mournful
As rain heard beating
Far off in the distance
While earth is parched more near.
On my heart is the black badge of exile;
I droop over it,
I accept its shame.
_The True Conqueror_
He only can bow to men
Lofty as a god
To those beneath him,
Who has taken sins and sorrows
And whose deathless spirit leaps
Beneath them like a golden carp in the torrent.
_Spring Love_
Through the weak spring rains
Two lovers walk together,
Holding together the parasol.
But the laughing rains of spring
Will break the weak green shoots of their love.
His will grow a towering stalk,
Hers, a cowering flower under it.
_The Endless Lament_
Spring rain falls through the cherry blossom,
In long blue shafts
On grasses strewn with delicate stars.
The summer rain sifts through the drooping willow,
Shatters the courtyard
Leaving grey pools.
The autumn rain drives through the maples
Scarlet threads of sorrow,
Towards the snowy earth.
Would that the rains of all the winters
Might wash away my grief!
_Toyonobu. Exile's Return_
The cranes have come back to the temple,
The winds are flapping the flags about,
Through a flute of reeds
I will blow a song.
Let my song sigh as the breeze through the cryptomerias,
And pause like long flags flapping,
And dart and flutter aloft, like a wind-bewildered crane.
[Illustration]
_Wind and Chrysanthemum_
Chrysanthemums bending
Before the wind.
Chrysanthemums wavering
In the black choked grasses.
The wind frowns at them,
He tears off a green and orange stalk of broken chrysanthemum.
The chrysanthemums spread their flattered heads,
And scurry off before the wind.
_The Endless Pilgrimage_
Storm-birds of autumn
With draggled wings:
Sleet-beaten, wind-tattered, snow-frozen,
Stopping in sheer weariness
Between the gnarled red pine trees
Twisted in doubt and despair;
Whence do you come, pilgrims,
Over what snow fields?
To what southern province
Hidden behind dim peaks, would you go?
"Too long were the telling
Wherefore we set out;
And where we will find rest
Only the Gods may tell. "
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_Part III_
_The Clouds_
Although there was no sound in all the house,
I could not forbear listening for the cry of those long white rippling waves
Dragging up their strength to break on the sullen beach of the sky.
_Two Ladies Contrasted_
The harmonies of the robes of this gay lady
Are like chants within a temple sweeping outwards
To the morn.
But I prefer the song of the wind by a stream
Where a shy lily half hides itself in the grasses;
To the night of clouds and stars and wine and passion,
In a palace of tesselated restraint and splendor.
_A Night Festival_
Sparrows and tame magpies chatter
In the porticoes
Lit with many a lantern.
There is idle song,
Scandal over full wine cups,
Sorrow does not matter.
Only beyond the still grey shoji
For the breadth of innumerable countries,
Is the sea with ships asleep
In the blue-black starless night.
_Distant Coasts_
A squall has struck the sea afar off.
You can feel it quiver
Over the paper parasol
With which she shields her face;
In the drawn-together skirts of her robes,
As she turns to meet it.
_On the Banks of the Sumida_
Windy evening of autumn,
By the grey-green swirling river,
People are resting like still boats
Tugging uneasily at their cramped chains.
Some are moving slowly
Like the easy winds:
Brown-blue, dull-green, the villages in the distance
Sleep on the banks of the river:
The waters sullenly clash and murmur.
The chatter of the passersby,
Is dulled beneath the grey unquiet sky.
_Yoshiwara Festival_
The green and violet peacocks
With golden tails
Parade.
Beneath the fluttering jangling streamers
They walk
Violet and gold.
The green and violet peacocks
Through the golden dusk
Showered upon them from the vine-hung lanterns,
Stately, nostalgically,
Parade.
_Sharaku Dreams_
I will scrawl on the walls of the night
Faces.
Leering, sneering, scowling, threatening faces;
Weeping, twisting, yelling, howling faces;
Faces fixed in a contortion between a scream and a laugh,
Meaningless faces.
I will cover the walls of night
With faces,
Till you do not know
If these faces are but masks, or you the masks for them.
Faces too grotesque for laughter,
Faces too shattered by pain for tears,
Faces of such ugliness
That the ugliness grows beauty.
They will haunt you morning, evening,
Burning, burning, ever returning.
Their own infamy creating,
Till you strike at life and hate it,
Burn your soul up so in hating.
I will scrawl on the walls of the night
Faces,
Pitiless,
Flaring,
Staring.
_A Life_
Her life was like a swiftly rushing stream
Green and scarlet,
Falling into darkness.
The seasons passed for her,
Like pale iris wilting,
Or peonies flying to ribbons before the storm-gusts.
The sombre pine-tops waited until the seasons had passed.
Then in her heart they grew
The snows of changeless winter
Stirred by the bitter winds of unsatisfied desire.
[Illustration]
_Dead Thoughts_
My thoughts are an autumn breeze
Lifting and hurrying
Dry rubbish about in a corner.
My thoughts are willow branches
Already broken
Motionless at twilight.
_A Comparison_
My beloved is like blue smoke that rises
In long slow planes,
And wavers
Over the dark paths of old gardens long neglected.
_Mutability_
The wind shakes the mists
Making them quiver
With faint drum-tones of thunder.
Out of the crane-haunted mists of autumn,
Blue and brown
Rolls the moon.
There was a city living here long ago,
Of all that city
There is only one stone left half-buried in the marsh,
With characters upon it which no one now can read.
_Despair_
Despair hangs in the broken folds of my garments;
It clogs my footsteps,
Like snow in the cherry bloom.
In my heart is the sorrow
Of years like red leaves buried in snow.
_The Lonely Grave_
Pilgrims will ascend the road in early summer,
Passing my tombstone
Mossy, long forgotten.
Girls will laugh and scatter cherry petals,
Sometimes they will rest in the twisted pine-trees' shade.
If one presses her warm lips to this tablet
The dust of my body will feel a thrill, deep down in the silent earth.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_Part IV_
_Evening Sky_
The sky spreads out its poor array
Of tattered flags,
Saffron and rose
Over the weary huddle of housetops
Smoking their evening pipes in silence.
_City Lights_
The city gleams with lights this evening
Like loud and yawning laughter from red lips.
_Fugitive Beauty_
As the fish that leaps from the river,
As the dropping of a November leaf at twilight,
As the faint flicker of lightning down the southern sky,
So I saw beauty, far away.
_Silver Jars_
I dreamed I caught your loveliness
In little silver jars:
And when you died I opened them,
And there was only soot within.
_Evening Rain_
Rain fell so softly, in the evening,
I almost thought it was the trees that were talking.
_Toy-Boxes_
Cities are the toy-boxes
Time plays with:
And there are often many doll-houses
Of which the dolls are lost.
_Moods_
A poet's moods:
Fluttering butterflies in the rain.
_Grass_
Grass moves in the wind,
My soul is backwards blown.
_A Landscape_
Land, green-brown;
Sea, brown-grey;
Island, dull peacock blue;
Sky, stone-grey.
_Terror_
Because of the long pallid petals of white chrysanthemums
Waving to and fro,
I dare not go.
_Mid-Summer Dusk_
Swallows twittering at twilight:
Waves of heat
Churned to flames by the sun.
_Evening Bell from a Distant Temple_
A bell in the fog
Creeps out echoing faintly
The pale broad flashes
Of vibrating twilight,
Faded gold.
_A Thought_
A piece of paper ready to toss in the fire,
Blackened, scrawled with fragments of an incomplete song:
My soul.
_The Stars_
There is a goddess who walks shrouded by day:
At night she throws her blue veil over the earth.
Men only see her naked glory through the little holes in the veil.
_Japan_
An old courtyard
Hidden away
In the afternoon.
Grey walks,
Mossy stones,
Copper carp swimming lazily,
And beyond,
A faint toneless hissing echo of rain
That tears at my heart.
_Leaves_
The splaying silhouette of horse-chestnut leaves
Against the tall and delicate, patrician-tinged sky
Like a princess in blue robes behind a grille of bronze.
Only beyond the still grey shoji
For the breadth of innumerable countries,
Is the sea with ships asleep
In the blue-black starless night.
_Distant Coasts_
A squall has struck the sea afar off.
You can feel it quiver
Over the paper parasol
With which she shields her face;
In the drawn-together skirts of her robes,
As she turns to meet it.
_On the Banks of the Sumida_
Windy evening of autumn,
By the grey-green swirling river,
People are resting like still boats
Tugging uneasily at their cramped chains.
Some are moving slowly
Like the easy winds:
Brown-blue, dull-green, the villages in the distance
Sleep on the banks of the river:
The waters sullenly clash and murmur.
The chatter of the passersby,
Is dulled beneath the grey unquiet sky.
_Yoshiwara Festival_
The green and violet peacocks
With golden tails
Parade.
Beneath the fluttering jangling streamers
They walk
Violet and gold.
The green and violet peacocks
Through the golden dusk
Showered upon them from the vine-hung lanterns,
Stately, nostalgically,
Parade.
_Sharaku Dreams_
I will scrawl on the walls of the night
Faces.
Leering, sneering, scowling, threatening faces;
Weeping, twisting, yelling, howling faces;
Faces fixed in a contortion between a scream and a laugh,
Meaningless faces.
I will cover the walls of night
With faces,
Till you do not know
If these faces are but masks, or you the masks for them.
Faces too grotesque for laughter,
Faces too shattered by pain for tears,
Faces of such ugliness
That the ugliness grows beauty.
They will haunt you morning, evening,
Burning, burning, ever returning.
Their own infamy creating,
Till you strike at life and hate it,
Burn your soul up so in hating.
I will scrawl on the walls of the night
Faces,
Pitiless,
Flaring,
Staring.
_A Life_
Her life was like a swiftly rushing stream
Green and scarlet,
Falling into darkness.
The seasons passed for her,
Like pale iris wilting,
Or peonies flying to ribbons before the storm-gusts.
The sombre pine-tops waited until the seasons had passed.
Then in her heart they grew
The snows of changeless winter
Stirred by the bitter winds of unsatisfied desire.
[Illustration]
_Dead Thoughts_
My thoughts are an autumn breeze
Lifting and hurrying
Dry rubbish about in a corner.
My thoughts are willow branches
Already broken
Motionless at twilight.
_A Comparison_
My beloved is like blue smoke that rises
In long slow planes,
And wavers
Over the dark paths of old gardens long neglected.
_Mutability_
The wind shakes the mists
Making them quiver
With faint drum-tones of thunder.
Out of the crane-haunted mists of autumn,
Blue and brown
Rolls the moon.
There was a city living here long ago,
Of all that city
There is only one stone left half-buried in the marsh,
With characters upon it which no one now can read.
_Despair_
Despair hangs in the broken folds of my garments;
It clogs my footsteps,
Like snow in the cherry bloom.
In my heart is the sorrow
Of years like red leaves buried in snow.
_The Lonely Grave_
Pilgrims will ascend the road in early summer,
Passing my tombstone
Mossy, long forgotten.
Girls will laugh and scatter cherry petals,
Sometimes they will rest in the twisted pine-trees' shade.
If one presses her warm lips to this tablet
The dust of my body will feel a thrill, deep down in the silent earth.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_Part IV_
_Evening Sky_
The sky spreads out its poor array
Of tattered flags,
Saffron and rose
Over the weary huddle of housetops
Smoking their evening pipes in silence.
_City Lights_
The city gleams with lights this evening
Like loud and yawning laughter from red lips.
_Fugitive Beauty_
As the fish that leaps from the river,
As the dropping of a November leaf at twilight,
As the faint flicker of lightning down the southern sky,
So I saw beauty, far away.
_Silver Jars_
I dreamed I caught your loveliness
In little silver jars:
And when you died I opened them,
And there was only soot within.
_Evening Rain_
Rain fell so softly, in the evening,
I almost thought it was the trees that were talking.
_Toy-Boxes_
Cities are the toy-boxes
Time plays with:
And there are often many doll-houses
Of which the dolls are lost.
_Moods_
A poet's moods:
Fluttering butterflies in the rain.
_Grass_
Grass moves in the wind,
My soul is backwards blown.
_A Landscape_
Land, green-brown;
Sea, brown-grey;
Island, dull peacock blue;
Sky, stone-grey.
_Terror_
Because of the long pallid petals of white chrysanthemums
Waving to and fro,
I dare not go.
_Mid-Summer Dusk_
Swallows twittering at twilight:
Waves of heat
Churned to flames by the sun.
_Evening Bell from a Distant Temple_
A bell in the fog
Creeps out echoing faintly
The pale broad flashes
Of vibrating twilight,
Faded gold.
_A Thought_
A piece of paper ready to toss in the fire,
Blackened, scrawled with fragments of an incomplete song:
My soul.
_The Stars_
There is a goddess who walks shrouded by day:
At night she throws her blue veil over the earth.
Men only see her naked glory through the little holes in the veil.
_Japan_
An old courtyard
Hidden away
In the afternoon.
Grey walks,
Mossy stones,
Copper carp swimming lazily,
And beyond,
A faint toneless hissing echo of rain
That tears at my heart.
_Leaves_
The splaying silhouette of horse-chestnut leaves
Against the tall and delicate, patrician-tinged sky
Like a princess in blue robes behind a grille of bronze.
