The pine tree sways in the smoke,
Which streams up and up.
There’s a wood in sound.
My legs lose themselves
Where the river mirrors daffodils
Like faces in a dream.
A cold wind and the white memory
Of a sasanqua.
Warm rain comes and goes.
I’ll wait calmly on the bank
Till the water clears
And willows start to bud.
Time is singed on the debris
Of air raids.
Somehow, here and now, I am another.
Canna
A red canna blooms,
While between us flickers
A death’s head, dancing there
Like a pigmy or tiny ball.
We try to catch it—
Now it brushes my hands,
Now dallies with her feet.
She often talks of suicide.
Scared, I avoid her cold face.
Again today she spoke
Of certain premonitions.
How can I possibly
Save this woman’s life?
Living as if dead, I shall
Give up my own. She must live.
Thistles
Thistles bloomed in the vast moonlit
Cup of the Mexican sands.
Thistles bloomed on the round hillock
Of a woman’s heart.
The stained sea was choked with thistles,
Sky stowed away in thistle stalks.
Thistles, resembling a male corpse, bloomed
Like murex from a woman’s side.
At the thorny root of a yellow cactus plant
A plucked pigeon crouched,
And off in the distance a dog whimpered,
As if swallowing hot air.
That was the best moment of the monk’s life.
Firm on a pile of firewood
With nothing more to say, hear, see,
Smoke wrapped him, his folded hands blazed.
There was nothing more to do, the end
Of everything. He remembered, as a cool breeze
Streamed through him, that one is always
In the same place, and that there is no time.
Suddenly a whirling mushroom cloud rose
Before his singed eyes, and he was a mass
Of flame. Globes, one after another, rolled out,
The delighted sparrows flew round like fire balls.
The Pipe
While I slept it was all over,
Everything. My eyes, squashed white,
Flowed off toward dawn.
There was a noise,
Which, like all else, spread and disappeared:
There’s nothing worth seeing, listening for.
When I woke, everything seemed cut off.
I was a pipe, still smoking,
Which daylight would knock empty once again.
Destruction
The universe is forever falling apart—
No need to push the button,
It collapses at a finger’s touch:
Why, it barely hangs on the tail of a sparrow’s eye.
The universe is so much eye secretion,
Hordes leap from the tips
Of your nostril hairs. Lift your right hand:
It’s in your palm. There’s room enough
On the sparrow’s eyelash for the whole.
A paltry thing, the universe:
Here is all strength, here the greatest strength.
You and the sparrow are one
And, should he wish, he can crush you.
The universe trembles before him.
What Is Moving
When I turned to look back
Over the waters
The sky was birdless.
Men were, are born.
Do I still live? I ask myself,
Munching a sweet potato.
Don’t smell of death,
Don’t cast its shadow.
Any woman when I glance her way,
Looks down,
Unable to stand it.
Men, as if dead,
Turn up the whites of their eyes.
Get rid of those trashy ideas—
The same thing
Runs through both of us.
My thought moves the world:
I move, it moves.
I crook my arm, the world’s crooked.
A little girl under a peach tree,
Whose blossoms fall into the entrails
Of the earth.
There you stand, but a mountain may be there
Instead; it is not unlikely that the earth
May be yourself.
You step against a plate of iron and half
Your face is turned to iron. I will smash
Flesh and bone
And suck the cracked peach. She went up the mountain
To hide her breasts in the snowy ravine.
Women’s legs
Are more or less alike. The leaves of the peach tree
Stretch across the sea to the end of
The continent.
The sea was at the little girl’s beck and call.
I will cross the sea like a hairy
Caterpillar
And catch the odor of your body.
Quails
It is the grass that moves, not the quails.
Weary of embraces, she thought of
Committing her body to the flame.
When I shut my eyes, I hear far and wide
The air of the Ice Age stirring.
When I open them, a rocket passes over a meteor.
A quail’s egg is complete in itself,
Leaving not room enough for a dagger’s point.
All the phenomena in the universe: myself.
Quails are supported by the universe
(I wonder if that means subsisting by God).
A quail has seized God by the neck
With its black bill, because there is no
God greater than a quail.
(Peter, Christ, Judas: a quail.)
A quail’s egg: idle philosophy in solution.
(There is no wife better than a quail.)
I dropped a quail’s egg into a cup for buckwheat noodles,
And made havoc of the Democratic Constitution.
Split chopsticks stuck in the back, a quail husband
Will deliver dishes on a bicycle, anywhere.
The light yellow legs go up the hill of Golgotha.
Those quails who stood on the rock, became the rock!
The nightfall is quiet, but inside the congealed exuviae
Numberless insects zigzag, on parade.
Rain
The rain keeps falling,
Even in dreams.
The skull leaks badly.
There’s a constant dripping
Down the back.
The rain, which no one
Remembers starting,
Keeps falling,
Even on the finest days.
The sparrow has cut the day in half:
Afternoons—yesterday’s, the day after tomorrow’s—
Layer the white wall.
Those of last year, and next year’s too,
Are dyed into the wall—see them?—
And should the wall come down,
Why, those afternoons will remain,
Glimmering, just as they are, through time.
(That was a colorless realm where,
Nevertheless, most any color could well up.)
Just as the swan becomes a crow,
So everything improves—everything:
No evil can persist, and as to things,
Why, nothing is unchangeable.
The squirrel, for instance, is on the tray,
Buffalos lumber through African brush,
The snail wends along the wall,
Leaving a silver trail.
The sparrow’s bill grips a pomegranate seed:
Just anything can resemble a lens, or a squirrel.
Because the whole is part, there’s not a whole,
Anywhere, that is not part.
And all those happenings a billion years ago,
Are happening now, all around us: time.
Indeed this morning the sparrow hopped about
In that nebulous whirlpool
A million light years hence.
And since the morning is void,
Anything can be. Since mornings
A billion years from now are nothingness,
We can behold them.
The sparrow stirs,
The universe moves slightly.
My wife is always knitting, knitting:
Not that I watch her,
Not that I know what she thinks.
(Awake till dawn
I drowned in your eyes—
I must be dead:
Perhaps it’s the mind that stirs.)
With that bamboo needle
She knits all space, piece by piece,
Hastily hauling time in.
Brass-cold, exhausted,
She drops into bed and,
Breathing calmly, falls asleep.
Her dream must be deepening,
Her knitting coming loose.
Fish
I hold a newspaper, reading.
Suddenly my hands become cow ears,
Then turn into Pusan, the South Korean port.
Lying on a mat
Spread on the bankside stones,
I fell asleep.
But a willow leaf, breeze-stirred,
Brushed my ear.
I remained just as I was,
Near the murmurous water.
When young there was a girl
Who became a fish for me.
Whenever I wanted fish
Broiled in salt, I’d summon her.
She’d get down on her stomach
To be sun-cooked on the stones.
And she was always ready!
Alas, she no longer comes to me.
An old benighted drake,
I hobble homeward.
But look, my drake feet become horse hoofs!
Now they drop off
And, stretching marvelously,
Become the tracks of the Tokaido Railway Line.
Afterimages
The volcanic smoke of Mount Aso
Drifted across the sea, white ash
Clinging to mulberry leaves
And crowning the heads of sparrows.
An open-mouthed lava crocodile;
A sparrow like a fossil sprig,
The moon filling its eyes;
A colossal water lizard stuck to a dead tree,
Its headland tail quaking.
A cloud floats in my head—beautiful!
When the sparrow opens its eyes,
Nothing but rosy space. All else gone.
Don’t tell me that tree was red—
The only thing that moved, ever closer,
Was a girl’s nose. All mere afterimages.
Water, coldness itself, flows underfoot.
The sparrow, eyes half closed, lay in an urn
In the pit. Now it fans up. The earth’s
Fiery column is nearly extinguished.
Shell
Nothing, nothing at all
is born,
dies, the shell says again
and again
from the depth of hollowness.
Its body
swept off by tide—so what?
It sleeps
in sand, drying in sunlight,
bathing
in moonlight. Nothing to do
with sea
or anything else. Over
and over
it vanishes with the wave.
Mushroom
I blow tobacco smoke
into her frozen ear.
A swallow darts above.
Pleasures are like mushrooms,
rootless, flowerless,
shoot up anywhere.
A metal ring hangs
from her ear, mildew
glowing in the dark.
Sparrow dives from roof to ground,
a long journey—a rocket soars
to the moon, umpteen globes collapse.
Slow motion: twenty feet down, ten billion
years. Light-headed, sparrow does not think,
philosophize, yet all’s beneath his wings.
What’s Zen? “Thought,” say masters,
“makes a fool.” How free the brainless
sparrow. Chirrup—before the first “chi,”
a billion years. He winks, another. Head left,
mankind’s done. Right, man’s born again.
So easy, there’s no end to time.
One gulp, swallow the universe. Flutter
on limb or roof—war, peace, care banished.
Nothing remains—not a speck.
“Time’s laid out in the eavestrough,”
sparrow sings,
pecks now and then.
Sky
Climbing the wax tree
to the thundering sky,
I stick my tongue out—
what a downpour!
Feet pulled in, sparrow dead
under a pall of snow.
“Sparrow’s a red-black bird,”
someone says, then—
“sun’s a white-winged bird.”
If the bird sleeps, so will man:
things melt in air, there’s only breathing.
You’re visible, nose to feet,
and while an ant guard rams a 2-by-4
genitals saunter down the road.
Budge them, they’ll roll over—
pour oil on them, light up.
Atom of thought, ten billion years—
one breath, past, present, future.
Wood’s so quiet. I cover my ears—
how slowly the universe crumbles.
Snow in withered field, nothing to touch.
Sparrow’s head clear as sky.
Afternoon
My hair’s falling fast—
this afternoon
I’m off to Asia Minor.
I stretch my hand—
everything disappears.
I saw in the snake-head
my dead mother’s face,
in ragged clouds
grief of my dead father.
Snap my fingers—
time’s no more.
My hand’s the universe,
it can do anything.
Sweet Potato
Of all things living
I’d be a sweet potato,
fresh dug up.
Camel
The camel’s humps
shifted with clouds.
Such solitude beheads!
My arms stretch
beyond mountain peaks,
flame in the desert.
When unborn, my mother minced
time with her rusty knife—
rain-soft, grained like cod-roe.
When ready, I burst from her womb.
Nothing better to do, I try
to relive that first house:
no one else there, however I
kicked touching nothing in
darkness—mite in a whale.
Posterity aeons hence, listen:
time’s a white radish, pickled,
yellowing. My father swam that
vinegar’s raw fish and vegetables.
Downy Hair
Charmed by a girl’s soft ears,
I piled up leaves and burnt them.
How innocent her face
in rising smoke—I longed
to roam the spiral of those ears,
but she clung stiffly
to the tramcar strap, downy
hair fragrant with leafsmoke.
“The instant he boarded the plane
Toad was in London”—wrong.
Toad’s unaware of distance,
between his belly and man’s,
between himself, the crushing wheel.
“Shrinking utterly, he’s nowhere”—right.
London, Tokyo flattened by webbed feet
all at once. In the marsh—no distance, sound—
a scaly back is overgrown with moonflowers.
Drizzle
Cat runs the dripping fence,
melts into green shade
hollow as thought lost.
Earth in a claw of dead cat,
guts strewn on pavement—
time, those needle eyes.
In the garret three kittens lap.
An old woman, like a crumpled bill,
tries to recall cat’s name.
Sea of Oblivion
Future, past, the sea
of oblivion,
with present capsized.
Sun splits the sea
in two—
one half’s already bottled.
Legs spread on the beach,
a woman feels
the crab of memory
crawl up her thigh.
Somewhere
her lover drowns.
Sand-smeared, bathing
in dreams,
the young leap against each other.
Cloud
I’m cheerful, whatever happens,
a puff in sky—
what splendor exists, I’m there.
Mother and I
While boats list in port
sunset ripens
the forest of Hakone.
Men fall like raindrops.
I perch on
a chair, open my umbrella.
Cloud-burst. Smiling, mother
sits up in
her coffin. Ages ago.
Tomorrow Columbus will reach
(was it?)
Venezuela, this hand
will embrace or kill—takes
but a finger.
Under white sail, the universe.
Awaking on grass, sheep, goat
stay put—how fine doing nothing.
Crow points from dead branch.
Sheep could care less—life, death,
all one where she lies
soft warm wool. Goat bleats,
horns sun-tipped. What’s better
than warmth? sheep muses, sharing
her wonder with goat, with crow.
Eternity
Ice on eaves, sparrow melts in my head,
cracked shapeless, no hint of brain.
Sparrow’s long journey. Now road flowers,
young girls breasting wheat.
(Once fry shot upstream towards clouds.)
Sparrow blinked: drifting on the moonlit sea,
a woman, legs octopus arms, waves biting
to black eyes. No need to grasp, no rim,
depth, shallowness—sun’s steering
round the navel, galaxies whirl the spine.
Snow’s hip-high, thighs stiff with frost.
(Sweet as fish, how fresh death’s breeze.)
Sparrow’s always sleeping—
meanwhile
a building surrounds him.
Snoop, shoot up the
elevator,
quite alone: the building’s
a pinch of dust. No day,
night,
so light strikes from
his throat, under a wing
glow
sun, moon, stars. No one’s here,
no one’s expected for a billion
years.
Sparrow dreams, sparrow knows.
Clay Image
Near the shrine, humped back,
bird on pole—eyes, warm
as folded wings, reflect
the penumbra of the universe.
On the horizon,
a cylindrical building,
once bird, now mud and stone.
Birth’s a crack in the
ground plan. Since universe
is no bigger than its head,
where’s the bird to fly?
Who says bird’s eyelashes
are short? A lump,
time rolled from nostril.
Cooling the bird’s hot tongue,
the unglazed red clay image.
Its eyes dark, and in their
cavities—
minute vibrations, earthquakes.
Gods
Gods are everywhere:
war between Koshi and Izumo
tribes still rages.
The all of All, the One
ends distinctions.
The three thousand worlds
are in that plum blossom.
The smell is God.
Braggart Duck
Duck lives forever,
daily. Waking, he finds
he’s slept a billion years.
The very center of the
universe, he has no use
for eyes, ears, feet.
What need for one
who knows his world
of satellite stations?
Freed from time,
changeless. Duck’s not
sharp as dog shooting
through space, a rocket.
Besides he’s
been there already.
Stone Wall
Flower bursts from stone,
in rain and wind
dog sniffs and aims a leak.
Butterfly-trace through haze
where child splashes.
Over the paper screen,
a woman’s legs, white, fast.
No more desire, I’m content.
Later I saw her, hands
behind her back—
repulsing nothing really,
welcoming sun
between her thighs.
Near the stone wall,
a golden branch.
Beach
Gale: tiles, roofs whirling,
disappearing at once.
Rocks rumble, mountains
swallow villages,
yet insects, birds chirp by
the shattered bridge.
Men shoot through space,
race sound. On TV nations
maul each other, endlessly.
Why this confusion,
how restore the ravaged
body of the world?
Moon and Hare
Things exist alone.
Up on the moon
I spot Hare
in a crater
pounding rice to cakes.
I ask for one.
“What shape?” says Hare.
“One like a rocket.”
“Here—take off!”
Up and out,
pass everything
at once,
free at last—
unaware of
where I’m heading.
Lap Dog
Lap dog in a cloth-wrapped box,
moist eyes, nose,
I tote you in place
of your evaporated mistress.
I’d like to brew down, devour,
ten thousand mini-skirted legs.
Body torn, yet spirit’s whole,
no knife can reach it.
Dawn breaks from her buttocks.
Runaway tramcar thunders by,
sun-flash! Fling
the lap dog down a manhole.
Ha! Sun-blade’s in her back.
Moon
Moon shines while billions
of corpses rot
beneath earth’s crust.
I who rise from them,
soon to join them—all.
Where does moon float?
On the waves of my brain.
Vimalakirti
Vimalakirti, Vaishali
millionaire, sutra hero,
in bed in his small space—
while you’re sick,
I’ll lie here.
Revive, I’m whole.
Illness, a notion,
for him body is sod, water—
moves, a fire, a wind.
Vimalakirti, layman hero,
at a word draws galaxies
to the foot of his bed.
The blackbird swooped,
eyes shadowing earth, dead leaves,
feathers tipped with snow.
One finds beaches anywhere,
airports, skies of snow.
Perched on the ticket counter,
blackbird watches
the four-engined plane land,
propellers stilled.
Dead leaves flutter from the sky.
Near Shinobazu Pond
A bream swam by the tramcar window,
the five-tiered pagoda bright in rain.
On the telephone wire, sparrow—
amused, in secret dialogue.
Voiceless, rock glimmers with
a hundred million years.
Day before yesterday, the dead sparrow
hopped on the fish-tank
where froth-eyed salamander
and a tropic fish curled fins.
The sparrow, spot of rose among
the lotus leaves, stirs evening air.
Dead man steps over sweaty sleepers
on the platform, in quest of peace.
Thunderously dawn lights earth.
Smashed by the train, head spattered
on the track—not a smudge of brain.
Nothing left: thought—smoke.
A moment—a billion years.
Don’t curl like orange peel, don’t ape
a mummified past. Uncage eternity.
When self’s let go, universe is all—
O for speed to get past time!
Rocks
Because the stake was driven
in that rice paddy,
world was buried in mud.
Rocks dropped like birds
from the crater:
being is mildew spread on non-being.
Rocks that were women stand,
wooden stakes, everywhere,
give birth to stones.
No-minds—whirling, flying off, birds.
Autumn blast—wild boar
limps, one leg dead grass.
Bird sings, feathers tattered,
eyes stiff twigs.
Boar gives his own.
As those bronze cavities
decay, he fuses into rock,
sets it and bird to flame,
and meteors to the sky.
Boar flashes on the sun,
red tail severed, scorching:
urn, inlaid with gold
and silver, holds the image.
Through night, glittering
with millet seeds,
boar shoots, a comet.
Spring
Spring one hundred years ago
was very warm: it’s in my
palm, such life, such gaiety.
Future is a bird streaking
aimlessly, past is dregs—
everything’s here, now.
Thought sparking thought
sparking thought: headlands
pocked by time, the ram of tides.
Rock rising, rock sinking.
No space, what was is nowhere—
a hundred years hence,
spring will be as warm.
Peach Blossom and Pigeon (painting by Kiso)
Pink petals of peach blossom,
blue/green pigeon’s head,
eyes bamboo slits, rainbow
wings fold in all history.
Black tail down, you fly to
future’s end, beyond the sun.
To clear the air, make sweetest
scent, you bulge your breast.
Branch in your coffee-colored claws,
wait till phantom bubbles burst around.
Spinning Dharma Wheel
A stone relief I never tire of:
life-sized Buddha, broken nose,
hair spiraling, eyes serene moons,
chipped mudra-fingers at the breast,
legs crossed in lotus. Under each arm
a red line streams—warm blood.
Around the halo, angels among flowers,
on either side, beasts, open-mouthed,
on guard. He turns the treasure wheel.
Three thousand years since Buddha
found the morning star—now
sun itself is blinded by his light.
Snake swam across the blue stream.
You’ve seen its slough—your own?
Tiger in the white bamboo, eyes hard:
learn from this—to see death
is to see another, never oneself.
Flames char the bamboo grove,
the vermilion sparrow has flown
into a fossil—just like that.
Tortoise moves, a slow fire,
down hill, flushed in sunset—
claws death to shreds, red, brown.
Tiger’s soft tongue laps a dragon
from the sea. Sparrow, riding
a shell-tank, makes for its belly.
What’s this? My body’s shaking with laughter.
A Little Sunlight
Trees in the wood lifeless,
leaves pall the earth.
On a large drift the red-sweatered
woman waits. There’s just
a blink of sun, a leaf blows
on her face. The man comes up
quietly, lies down beside her.
Soon she takes off alone,
toting her case. He prays
(I hear him now) all may go well
with her. A plane roars above,
he snuffs his cigarette.
Two dead leaves blow apart.
Explosion
I’m an unthinking dog,
a good-for-nothing cat,
a fog over gutter,
a blossom-swiping rain.
I close my eyes, breathe—
radioactive air! A billion years
and I’ll be shrunk to half,
pollution strikes my marrow.
So what—I’ll whoop at what
remains. Yet scant blood left,
reduced to emptiness by nuclear
fission, I’m running very fast.
Railroad Station
A railroad station, a few
passengers getting on, off,
a closed stall on the platform.
Is it there or in my head,
floating on the creases
of my brain? No need to stay
or leave, a place so quiet:
ticket window, wicket, employees—
none. But there’s a samurai
committing suicide. Station
master cocks the camera’s eye,
proof of his diligence.
Train skims rails of my brain,
what’s hanging to that strap
is briefcase, camera, no man.
Absence
Just say, “He’s out”—
back in
five billion years!