January 25, 2022

Aniversários - Kitahara Ryūkichi

 





Tanka poem ( 5 )

The drop of milk
Which had fallen
On the light red polish
Of her nails
Made me yearn for the past 



How sad is
The road man must take
The road to prison
The pebbled road down which
a police wagon creaks



I can hear so faintly
My mother and father
Awake
Whispering
Dawn after a snowfall



I climb a hill
With a fish over my shoulder
The purple flowers
In the potato fields
Are now in full bloom



We are well into spring
And I have thought of peonies
For several days now
How many years have passed
Since my eyesight failed?


*****


THE WATER SURFACE

At evening the falling flowers of the willow
Make a twilight, and through it
The water surface appears,
Reflecting the eyes of the daughter of the house.
While I felt myself caressed in your heart,
Your face singularly pale,
Suddenly one of the ripples changed its color
And showed the eyes of an imaginary ogre.
When I, frightened, stared at it,
It turned silvery like a tiny minnow,
Changed into a harmonica, into an oar,
And back into the eyes of the girl.
The willow flowers are falling on
A dragon-fly-hunter by the gutter of the eaves,
And my mind, tired, alone,
Is softly caressed at the surface of the water.

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