I was talking to a friend
about the way the world
is going
and we thought back
in time
to the sixties
not just in america
but all over the world
death war peace protest
words common in many tongues
civil liberties in check
fingers pointing
black and white issues
countries divided
by ageracereligiongender
issues still alive today
names change
and faces too
but victory is still a dream
away
Month: April 2014
poem by Mibu No Tadami
Yes, I am in love.
They were talking about me
Before daylight,
Although I began to love
Without knowing it.
Koi su tefu
Waga na wa madaki
Tachi ni keri
Hito shirezu koso
Omoi someshi ga
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
poem by Fujiwara No Tadamichi
As I row over the plain
Of the sea and gaze
Into the distance, the waves
Merge with the bright sky.
Wata no hara
Kagi idete mireba
Hisa kata no
Kumoi ni mago
Okitsu shira nami
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
poem by The Priest Sarumaru
Deep in the mountain,
Trampling the red maple leaves,
I hear the stag cry out
In the sorrow of Autumn.
Oku yama ni
Momiji fumi wake
Naku shika no
Koe kiku toki zo
Aki wa kanashiki
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
poem by Yamanoue Okura from The Man’yoshü
Like the unchanging cliffs,
I would remain just as I am.
But I am living in this world
and cannot hold time back.
translated by Ian Hideo Levy
poem by Prince Ishihara from The Man’yoshü
I will sway this way and that
to the whims of your heart,
you who are to me
like the unique and precious jewel
nestled in a crown of hair.
translated by Ian Hideo Levy
on apricots & other fruit: for RW
I’m eating an apricot, actually two apricots from the basket I bought, and remembering that July after Ali’s wedding when we were having breakfast at the hotel and you loaded up on apricots because they were so juicy, saying, these Turkish apricots are wonderful. I never tasted apricots this sweet.
It was one of those moments that replays itself in my head every time I eat an apricot even though my first memories of apricots are of my mother who loved that particular fruit and said something similar whenever she was biting into one, though without the reference to Turkey because she had never gone there, or here, actually, since it is where I live now.
Fruit. I think of you a lot when I eat fruit. There were always different types of fruit on your kitchen table that you were slicing for me to eat. Watermelon, for instance, is something I can’t eat without remembering it was one of your favorites. You’d drink the juice from watermelons after eating a whole bowlful. I’d be picking the seeds out with my knife while you were digging in with abandon, savoring the smell of freshly cut watermelon.
There are certain types of fruit that I associate with people: green apples for one, bananas for another, cherries for my grandfather, grapefruit and prunes for my mother, and apricots, watermelon, Chinese pears, pomegranates, star fruit, dates for you. I imagine sitting in the breakfast nook of your kitchen in Bayside at around one in the am while you slice up fruit for me to eat with the tea and wine you have poured into our cups/glasses as we sit and talk after returning from the last show of a movie we saw in Manhattan. It seems you were always slicing fruit for me to eat with those beverages of choice in your kitchen. Maybe you were trying to counteract the wine, stuffing vitamins down my throat in an attempt to prolong my health, which, thankfully, has been the best of all my friends, as you’d like to point out, and possibly you thought you deserved some of the credit for that because of all that fruit, and vegetables, but that’s another story, you made sure I ate.
Love comes in many forms and feeding someone, slipping food onto their plate during meals, cooking favorite dishes, putting those lichee nuts or rapeseed into the grocery cart because you know they love them, well that’s a kind of love that goes beyond self into that sphere of concern for the well being of someone you wish will live a thousand years. It’s something mothers do, and wives and husbands, or at least the kind you want to marry because you know they treat food as if it were some sacred object, a special, holy gift that they are bestowing on you. And it is, since food is life, and as they pass that bowl of rice, that plate of tomatoes sprinkled with olive oil and basil, that bowl of cherries, that sliced apple and walnuts, that apricot, they are giving you hope for the future, a wish of long life, a dream of tomorrow.
And I think of you, my dear friend, as I eat my apricot and though we are thousands of miles apart and will, in all probability, never live in the same city again, I will not forget your acts of kindness, just as you seem never to forget mine, and the love we shared passes continually between us, from one apricot to the next, from my mouth, my heart, to yours.
poem by Prince Yuge from The Man’yoshü
Is it a bird
longing for the past
that soars crying
over the imperial well,
there by the evergreen?
translated by Ian Hideo Levy
poem by Prince Naga from The Man’yoshü
If autumn were here
these would be mountains
as we see them now,
where the deer cries
in longing for his wife–
on these high fields.
translated by Ian Hideo Levy
The Waters of Lung-t’ou by Hsü Ling
The road that I came by mounts eight thousand feet;
The river that I crossed hangs a hundred fathoms.
The brambles so thick that in summer one cannot pass!
The snow so high that in winter one cannot climb!
With branches that interlace Lung Valley is dark:
Against cliffs that tower one’s voice beats and echoes.
I turn my head, and it seems only a dream
That I ever lived in the streets of Hsien-yang.
translated by Arthur Waley