SATURDAY MORNING FEVER (SHIKI, 1901)

 

yūgao no                        I dream of making

tana tsukuran to             a trellis for moon-flowers

omoedomo                      to climb

aki machigatenu              but oh my life that will not

waga inochi kamo            bear the weight till autumn!

 

Note:  How on earth can anyone stand to live with me?  I’ve borne the weight till autumn, by the way, but not gracefully. 

Tonight we adjourned again to our drive, a majestic platform fit for Chariots Of The Gods? visits, at significant sunset.  We live deep inside forest and overlook woods and rises from Signal Hill, Chester County's apex.  Light the most beautiful I had ever seen; no Hollywood artificer-necromancer conjuring A Midsummer’s Night Dream light could possibly have improved it.  It fit my inside-outside-somewhere I guess mood, was substrating, honest and real.  No ballooning spiders but instead a stone, a leaf and an unfound door. 

 

She Darked The Sun -- Dillard and Clark (Link)

Dreams While Sick -- Climbing Mt. Fuji (Shiki)

happily

I climbed Mt. Fuji and

as my legs trembled

on its peak

awoke

ureshikumo

noborishi Fuji no

itadaki ni

ashi wananakite

yume samen to su

Masaoka Shiki:  From Byōchū Yume [Dreams While Sick], 1898

PINE

to every needle

of the needled pine it clings --

the pearl white dew

forming but to scatter

scattering but to form 

matsu no ha no

ha goto ni musubu

shiratsuyu no    

okite wa kobore           

koborete wa oku                                   

                              

NOTE:   This Masaoka Shiki tanka from 1900 is one of a group of poems he composed about dew upon pine needles.  His translator and biographer, Janine Beichman, thinks this is the best of the series.  Like many people, I have strong feelings about and associations with pine trees.  Having always been up and out-and-about early, I easily recognize the phenomenon and experience  Shiki paints so beautifully and accurately here.  We’ve watched a number of  evergreens grow up from infancy at our house in Tuxedo, New York, both specimens the previous owner planted and our own Christmas trees, which mark all the years of Jane’s childhood.  

Probably my favorite is a tiny ornamental tree we picked up for a song that the grower certainly never meant for post-Christmas planting.  Seeing it standing from our terrace as a mature, but still small, strong, firmly rooted tree, among its now-giant siblings, is wonderful.


Shortly, much too soon for me, my dear daughter will be returning to Maine's  woods where she'll be among millions of fragrant pines, each an individual, but seen from above, from the windows of the low-flying airplanes bound for Portland for example, all part of a vibrant evergreen civilization.  We haven't many pines where we live in Pennsylvania.  I hope and expect Jane will "twig" the change and make friends with the trees in all their changes and all their constancy.   

 

Far Away Under The Skies Of America (Shiki, 1898)

 
           far away
under the skies of America   
they began 
           baseball -- ah
I could watch it forever!
                                     
 
hisakata no
Amerikabito no
hajime ni shi
bēesubōru wa
miredo akanu kamo