Shoichiro Iwakiri

The day I visit Mother with my family carrying a gift of Japanese pastry,
my birth Mother busily dresses herself in kimono and sits on the tatami,
welcomes us, and places hospitable dishes before us.
Wrapped in the familiar scent of bedding
having had our stories blossom for some days
we exchange our parting words, and we wave.
When she is sure that we are no longer visible
Mother lets her kimono slide off slowly, allowing
the roof, walls, pillars and floor to disappear, having conjured them all
by the power of Fantasy.
Now she sits bathing in the moonlight in a desolate garden.
The wind rises, taking her thinned hair in its cold flow, in a town
where people no longer live (in such desolation
I cannot even go crazy), like a red sandalwood box decaying in the dews,
like a box holding a child's collection of pebbles, buttons and marbles,
like a box that sings a song when its lid is lifted,
like a box that is waiting for a hand to wind it
Mother sits, drenched in the moonlight, in the dew-laden grass.
© Translation: 2008, Takako U. Lento
...

Frothing grape seeds corrode the moon.
A reddish blue twilight spreads through the breath that
carries words,
transports a single spring, a single sea
to the glory of oblivion.
Then an angel arrives to place flowers
on a table in the darkness of my mind
where I ponder and yearn, and
quiet winter infuses fragrance into my dream.
I hear in the wind the rain the dead hear,
soaking thoughts and grasses, moistening the muddied Sun.
...

A child is
stooped over
picking flowers
with her fingers
storing away light and gifts.
A man is reading words
sitting
holding down the pages with his fingers
storing away flames and shadows.
Fingers connect
‘Reading and Picking'
Read, picked, and compiled
A child picking flowers. A man reading poems.
...

To live
is always convoluted
it constantly harms the so-called Self.
What a sloppy mess it is to live.
I am doing today
what I was appalled to see others doing a few days ago.
While I allow myself love and happiness
the world becomes ambiguous at the point of touching another
what my eyes see during the day will not revert to the
anonymity of Nature

Born like mushrooms from the great earth
we walk on along our paths.
Beautiful lumps of flesh, slack lumps of flesh
different shapes placed over different masses -
allowing skin to blur the lines our eyes see
we see what is vulnerable, and know what is threatened
...