Kiyoko Nagase

Nihilism's Corpse

Nihilism is a deep-sea fish.
When it, in the form of language, surfaces in the sea, it is already lifeless. I detest its corpse like a dirty rag. I hate it.


When a Truck Comes and Runs Over Me

When a truck comes and runs over me, "hungry soul" pops out of my mouth. "Freedom" flows out from my ribs as the incarcerating fence breaks.
Before the truck runs over me, no one can tell me apart from ordinary people.
So I want you to know that writing poetry is as weighty as having a truck run over me. I don't want you to take it lightly.


What is a Poet?

What is a poet?
A poet must be more honest than anyone else.
In order to speak more honestly than anyone else
about the soul of mankind, about one's own being
a poet masters lying


Why I Write Poetry

Just as water courses through a plant —
because water dries on a plant's surface, and
because a plant is a pump drawing water up through its roots —
so does poetry course through me.
If there's no drying action, the water will not move up.
If there's no force to pump the water, the water will not circulate.
I have a small pump handle in my mind.
My pump handle lets me draw water from the Earth.


Poetry is

identical to chlorophyll capturing the Sun.


Poetry Needs Rhythm

Poetry needs rhythm not for dancing, but as a tool to carve into the wall of a heart. Rhythm is an ice pick.
...

Heavenly maidens on earth, wedded to fishermen and hunters,
always long for, unable to forget,
the days when we flew freely through the boundless heavens.

No one knows the joy I cannot forget
while life's doleful grind of making a living
goes on from morning to evening with no respite.
As I draw water from the well
the heavenly light shimmers in it;
as flowers bloom
the heavenly robe of my past billows in them.
I sing to my children
of my yearning, whispered in the rain and wind
they learn it by heart
they may wonder what it means.

One day to console myself
I take a dip in ocean waves warmed by the Spring
my tears mix with the salty sea
the sky is far away, shining gold

Ah, part of me rides on a cloud
passing over distant ridges
Yet if I should someday leave
for that vapor-green
how my relatives will lament

Bound to the earth, while longing for the sky
on shores and in valleys filled with glorious trees
heavenly maidens on earth also grow old
as the years drift on with winters passing, springs arriving.
...

May I be a great big tree
so big I can't see those taking shelter under me,
a deep green conical figure wrapped in serenity
Just as I dangle my bare feet in the water
may my roots joyfully draw
from an unknown subterranean current

May I be such a great big tree
that those who look at me
will naturally feel peace and repose

Yet may my luxuriating branches and leaves
whisper to a breeze like stray hair
May they awaken before anyone else in the rosy glow of morning
May their blue shadows be cast on earth
spreading like a trailing lace skirt
May my thoughts be kind
May my thoughts be refreshing
The tree will not move
The tree will not speak
yet may it be a ladder heavenly children ascend and descend

If someone comes and rests by me at the height of day
I will provide deep shadow and infinite comfort

On a stormy day
I will be even greater, more stalwart
I will firmly anchor my roots in the great earth and will not sway
Yet my sap will flow smoothly
even my incised wounds will issue forth a refreshing scent
Soon I will whisper a smiling song
When night arrives I will dissolve into darkness
unbeknownst to people
may the song alone become invisible ripples
...

*
You arrived on a day with a gentle breeze
crying suddenly as if you came rolling out of the heavens
All of a sudden, at that moment, inside me
rose up the roar of a lioness,
"I will endure anything for you!"


*
A baby recalls its heavenly friends
though its eyes do not see well yet
It smiles gently in the morning light
the way an empty swing
sways slightly in the breeze

*
It looks like the start of a hot day.
Golden dewdrops have formed on the bamboo leaves outside my window.
I am recovering day by day.
Looking forward to happy days when I can work
I rest for now, a clear pool of time

*
You come to me and suckle
like a little fish
picking at a lotus leaf

*
You cast a green shade
over my solitary life
like a readily swaying maple branch
arching outside my window -
just a shapeless flickering light
yet you bring me thoughts of infinity
With a few beautiful words
and a soft loving gaze
you glue my solitary life
to this world
...

As a silkworm spins its cocoon
I spin my own night
I reel off the night to build a room
Under the deep-violet-colored starry night
I burn a light just for myself
and build a small egg-shaped world

The daytime is there for everybody
That's when I work forgetting everything
At night everyone recedes to distant places
All things visible become invisible
and for pampered me
gently thoughtfully melt into the darkness

Inside a world for myself alone
I gleam just as mosses and fireflies do
Wishing to live out a good life
to deepen my heart's desire to yearn for the beautiful
I weave a few quiet lines
with my fingers still soiled from my daytime work

A drop of my nightly world,
my small solitary world with my own light on,
my egg-shaped world for recollections and wishes,
a quiet pathway I take all alone between today and tomorrow -
it filters the painful fevers from my daytime self
to make me into a crystalline droplet
...

Humor me with your sweet words.
Please me with your warm voice.
Will you accept and compliment
my thoughtfulness for you even though I am naive?
Please humor me with your grateful smile
to tell me that you need me more than anyone else.

When you do
will I feel self-important, and become arrogant?
No, no.
I will clutch your words as if they were a tender tendril.
Empowered by them, I will raise myself.
I will become more and more loving.
I will become a more and more beautiful
and thoughtful woman.

Ah, I grew up in a land so barren.
In my deprived heart the only wish
is to feel joy in believing I please you.
If you understand it even as much as
a morning dew or a breeze
my eyes will be filled with a youthful glimmer.
Humored and fooled I will be enriched
and joyful tears will well up in my eyes.
Ah, lead me with your gentle applause
as you'd lead on the blind-folded oni of a game of tag.
...

With no friends of your own
you are looking only at me
and you accuse me.
You accuse me of being inconsiderate
No, not enough
No, not enough
not enough proof of loving you
how insolent of me not to look happy all the time
how impudent of me not to be able to forecast today's weather for you
you always tell me to do things I can't

I want to start learning magic.
I want to stop your criticism with a single glance.
I want to put your heart to sleep with one finger.
I want to go out every night riding a broom.
I want to jump over the mountain ridge
trailing my hair like smoke.
I want to fly into the sparkling moonlight
laughing away your beratings down there.

You, so simple,
give no thought to the pain that is almost killing me.
Yet, you will calmly go to heaven by and by.
And I, having wished for witchcraft, will fall to hell
Ah, that will create ten billion years of separation.
...

For some time now I have been aware
of your eyes fixed on me from the shade of a tree.
You, so fondly treasured by your husband,
are radiant with a fair glow like a Renoir
or a Titian.
I have been tempered by toilsome sparks of fires
all by myself, gasping for air.
Now I stand tall on my ground
managing to speak with your husband.
I am no longer embarrassed
I behave simply as a wholesome human being -
Yet I am aware.
Your eyes, so blue they look dewy, glisten
with worries and apprehensions.
My proud heart grows tender
deeply moved by women's frailty
I slowly hang down my head.

Your husband is truly exceptional;
It is a small joy for me to stand before him,
as your keen insight tells you.
You see clearly
my tempered skin glowing gold.
Beyond that, you know that I came
in a blouse with many frills like clouds.
Also you know I am wearing a brand-new hat.
You are intent on seeing through everything.
A wistful tide surges inside me.
Honestly I am not trying to take anything from you.
I am simply pleased to be able to speak to him
as a self-reliant person,
ah, not disturbed by anything malicious -

My heart slowly gradually wilts
To think, ah why is it, how frail we are, we women -
...

It is truly good
to have colors disappear at the end of each day
for me who has a heart so joyfully excited
waiting for them to be born afresh tomorrow morning

My dear one, who has not shown yourself to me
though you are believed to be in this space
That I cannot see you now is also good
for me anxiously waiting for the new morning light -
like I wait for the fir tree, all alone,
to gradually start to glow
casting its shadow like a wingless bird
in the chilly air that allows a faint view of just the curvature of the earth
...

The fleeting moment when my poetry forms
the fleeting moment I love
the fleeting moment when I stare into burning flames
propping up my chin on my hands, dyeing my face golden
that fleeting moment when barley
is boiling in a pot for tomorrow
in my pitch-dark cookhouse -
does it come down from heaven?
or am I burning along with the flames?
Quick rhythms, dancing and lilting
oooooh
in the crimson brilliance
my crown is being forged
...

No shoes fit my feet.
Shoes that would snugly fit me
may be hanging among the stars.
First of all I dislike shoes.
Isn't it simply crude to make things shaped like feet
and put your feet in them?
That's also slavish.
I prefer something more airy and winged.
I would choose something more moist and amicable
Can't people think that way at all?
Once all women, as a matter of course, wore big bulging hair-dos
There were times they would be too embarrassed to be seen
unless they wore dresses that touched the floor.

At night, I look for shoes in the starry smoothness
I fail to find a shoe-shaped constellation
then my billowing skirt touches the dawn in the East.
But once the day breaks I am standing on the grass.
My soles are more beautiful than most shoes.
Besides my soles are always hungry
they always bleed on gravel.
...

I am warm, moist soil
I am a single supple stalk
I draw my life
all the way up into corollas of wild berries on the roadside

I am amazed at
a breast of water welling
to flow into the inlet of a muddy rice paddy
I am amazed at
myself being
hot steam blowing fire and sulfur up
from the bottom of the great ocean, deep indigo.
I am amazed at
the crimson blood flow
covering the earth's surface in human shape;
I am amazed that it swells as the tides ebb and flow, and
gushes out monthly under distant invisible gravity.

A person's love, a person's temperament, is
as fragile as a mushroom in its pitiable shape
as helpless as seeking shelter from rain under a shepherd's purse,
yet I am amazed at myself being a shroud that finally envelops him
at a time when one man is despondent.

I luxuriate and I am the same as soil
I share countless failures and immense waste
with tiny maggots in the dirt
and daffodils quivering at the edges of unknown cliffs

I am amazed that I am the pulsating twilight.
I am amazed that I am a dewdrop
which at a set time rises to the blade tip of a rice plant.

I am the earth.
I live there, and I am the very same earth.

In the four billionth year
I have come to know
the eternal cold moon, my other self, my hetero being,
then, for the first time, I am amazed that I am warm mud.
...

A twister's lament
Your visage is now in ripples
my water surface does not calm down
My mind was at peace even though we didn't meet
because you were everywhere
Your intense gaze from the distance used to lighten my gait
and I could walk calmly even through thorns

Yet, he is no more
When I heard ‘Death' captured and took him away
my heart whirled up into the sky like a twister
Oh, his hands that wrapped me are gone now
A path in mid-air whirls up high, winding like a string
around its invisible hollow core
soaring high, yet not on wings
it moves only as heat attached to sand

Today I walk with such a heavy gait,
yet I appear to others as simply slow and graceful — but to where?
The capture left just a momentary shining scar in mid-air
my rival was ‘death'
Absently I marvel that it's a mere half-month since he's been gone
My debility has already changed my shape
Just as a cloud cannot hold its shape and let it rain
I dissolve from all corners and let it rain
That nuanced and vast whole!
My attraction equaling infinity!
My sorrows raining as far as Lethe
weigh too heavy for me to support
waft low on the ground
like lead-colored fog
...

My dear, you've gone into the earth
you are silent now all day long
motionless in a damp place

I, who write poetry, always tried to be by myself
and could not think of anything else
so you must have been very lonely

Not wanting to distract me, you were watching me from a distance
That was your love in indigo color
But I never even thought about it

Since I am truly by myself now
I can freely beat my wings at any time
yet, strangely, I feel you right next to me

Please be with me here for real -
saying that makes my tears flow of their own accord
I couldn't bring myself to say those words while you were alive

A bad wife, heartless me
Even though I wanted to do my best to be good to you
my heart somehow drifted to distant dreams

But a man in this world
doesn't even dream of apologizing to his wife for his absence
due to his work, however gigantic and rock-like his sculpting may have been

All I did was knead some malleable and familiar mud
Why do I feel so sorry
that my heart was not singly attentive to you - ?

I am a worthless woman, a good-for-nothing woman
even if you say, "That's OK"
to me from underground

I have half-read books piled like a junk-heap by my bed
I wake up in the middle of the night and pick one of them up
At times they flutter to the floor like butterflies trying to take off

Your desire was to let me live
Even now, keeping a little distance, you are looking over me, aren't you?
Rather, you want to say, you are closer to me because you are dead, right?

Misfit in this world, not a member of any group
you were all by yourself like a salamander
You were looking only at me from the shadow of rocks, you, my indigo mist
...

O you, who come to me at dawn
From where the teteppoppō's* cooings are heard,
You, who come towards me quietly, so quietly.
Ah, the mountains and slopes of my life
Have been dark and so steep.
Now I have grown old, longing, as do all who have aged,
A million times, for the days of my youth.

You know, I was then leaving home,
Carrying a small basket,
My feet trembling,
With no idea as to where to go,
Counting only on my heart in love—
Youth was itself an agony.

How I wish you had come then,
But you did not come.
Should I have told the wayside willow
How I had waited?
Should I have given my message
To the little whirl of wind?
Your ears were too far for my words to reach.
You simply passed on
Like the whistle of a train
Heard far beyond the evening glow.

All has passed.
You cannot come now to make amends.
Yet, at the close of my life's days—
O you, who come to me at dawn
From where the teteppoppo's cooings are heard,
You, who come towards me quietly, so quietly.
You, who come— oh, with what purpose—
With silent steps,
You, who come
Only to let my bitter tears flow...
...