Preface The phenomenon called I Is one postulated, organic alternating-current-lamp Blue illumination (A complex of all transparent ghosts) Together with scenes and with everyone Busily, busily flickering Very surely to keep on lighting, One karmic alternating-current-lamp Blue illumination (Light persisting, its electric lamp lost) These, from twenty-two months' Direction sensed to be past Papers and mineral ink assembling (Everything that flickers with me Everyone senses at the same time) Continuing on to this, Are links and links of light and shade, Sketches of mental images as they are About all this, people, galaxies, asuras and sea urchins Eating cosmic dust, inhaling air or saltwater Miyazawa Kenji's "Preface" and Other Poems Tomiyama Hidetoshi and Michael Pronko Might think up fresh ontologies But they are ultimately a mental climate Yet surely these recorded scenes are Each the very scene recorded as it is And if it is nothing, nothing itself is as it is And so to an extent is shared by everyone (All is within me everyone So everyone within each one is all) Yet within the Cenozoic alluvial epoch's Enormous shining accumulation of time, The words supposed to have been rendered correctly In a light's eclipse, time's mere speck (Or a billion years of Asura) Might have already changed composition or quality And yet both I and the typographer Might sense them to be not changed at all, That, as a tendency, is possible, Really as we sense our receptive organs And scenes and characters Just sensing them in common, So what is called records and histories, geological histories Along with various data (Under the temporal spatial constraints of karma) Are no more than what we sense Perhaps two thousand years from now A pertinently different geology will be adopted Relevant evidence will emerge one by one from the past So everyone will think that two thousand years before There were colorless peacocks filling the blue sky And then aspiring scholars at the upper stratum of the atmosphere From the place of glittering frozen nitrogen Will excavate splendid fossils Or might well find In a stratified plane of Cretaceous sandstone Gigantic footprints of transparent humankind All these propositions are asserted As properties of images or time itself In the fourth dimensional continuum January 20, 1924 Miyazawa Kenji Miyazawa Kenji’s "Preface" and Other Poems Spring and Asura (mental sketch modified) From the gray steel of mental images Akebi vines coil around clouds Wild rose thickets, humus marshes Everywhere patterns and patterns of duplicity (When thicker than the noon's wind-instrument music Amber splinters fall down) Anger's bitterness, blueness At the bottom of the light in April's atmosphere Spitting, gnashing, coming and going I am an asura (The scene swaying in tears) Unto the limits of visible smashing clouds In the limpid sea of the heavens The winds of Sacred Glass go far and wide Zypressen one single row of spring Breathes in ether, black From the column of their darkened feet Snowy ridges of Mount Heaven can be glimpsed, however (Shimmering waves, white polarized light) True words are not here Clouds scatter and fly in the sky Ah, at the bottom of shining April Gnashing, burning coming and going I am an asura (Chalcedonic clouds flowing Where does it sing, a bird of spring?) The Sun Wheel darkening to blue Asura resonates with the woods From heaven's bowl collapsing in a dazzle Throngs of black trees extend Their branches grown thick and sorrowful All the duplicated scenes when In the dispirited woods from a treetop Flashes, darts off, a crow (The atmosphere clearer and clearer The hushed cypresses stand in the heavens) Someone is passing the grass field's gold One ordinary human form In a straw coat looking at me, a farmer Can you really see me? At the bottom of the blinding ocean atmosphere (The sorrow deeper and bluer) Zypressen swaying quietly A bird again cuts the blue sky (True words are not here Asura's tears fall to the dirt) Breathing in the sky anew The lungs shrink, pale white (May this body be dispersed into particles in the sky) The treetops of ginkgos flash once again Zypressen blacker and blacker Sparks of clouds flow down (April 8, 1922) Annelida Tanzerin (Well this is water sol Hazy agar liquid) The sunlight golden roses A small, red wriggling worm Wearing water and light around its body Is alone doing a dance Truly arabesque letters decorate) Fly corpses Dead yew leaves Pearl bubbles Moss stems ripped up and so (Princess Nachiranatora Now at the bottom of the water on a granite stone Together with Mister Yellow Shadow Deigns to dance for pleasure Oh but, no, before long Her Highness will float up, soon) The red Annelida Tanzerin Has two pointed ears With segments of phosphorescent coral Adorned primly with pearl buttons She turns and twirls around Truly arabesque letters decorate) Miyazawa Kenji’s "Preface" and Other Poems Wind Woods (In an oak tree no bird builds a nest Because it rattles too much) Here the grass is too rough And doesn't suit breathing air from a faraway sky and Falling over as hard as I like There lying down watery-colored Toshio, you get that numbness often The other day you made me button up for you)) Which Toshio of the two? Kawamura? That pale genius of comedy, an actor in "The Plant Doctor" I should jump up to my feet ((Oh you said Toshio, which one?)) ((Kawamura)) As I thought, Moonbeams stir the throng of oaks The oaks rustle all over This side of the green bank wet with the rain A mantle coated with rubber as if blue with mud Is moving slowly, slowly That surely is a tough thing Where are you right now? Already in the yellowish shady space on the right side of me Are you standing straight? The rain has turned more transparent, and stronger Is some child chewing? Over there that man sputters noises from his throat Now I think I'd like to go into the hallway Please come and go with me ten more times With your big, bare feet shining white On the cold boards Please walk with me (May 12, 1922) [The hanging ornaments are hard, and drop down straight] [the beginning lost] The hanging ornaments are hard, and drop down straight. Really, shimmering and shining, the living things fall down. Truly those heavenly beings' Sorrowful cries more transparent Than hydrogen sometime somewhere, Have you not heard? The spears of ice sticking straight into the heavens, Their cries, you must have heard. But when you hear about those who Fall down, or those who drowning try to Gulp down bitter salt water wholeheartedly, You only hear it now as A pitiable story of certain silly things Or a slightly unusual tale. Yet only to think so And actually to bite into water Are utterly, utterly different. It is cold enough to be hot, Bitter enough to be tasteless, Sad enough for blue darkness to become transparent. Those who have fallen there all cry out, Is it I who have fallen into this lake? Has the fall really happened? Completely. Who could believe that at once? But in the end they believe it, And are sadder because of it. I have told you such a thing Not so that you may not fall But for you to fall, and to swim all the way. Everyone will see it, and The strongest ones fall down wishing it, And then fly upward, together with the other ones. (May 12, 1922) (July 5, 1924) When I go through this woods The path will return to the waterwheel I saw The birds are crying, glimmering They surely are thrushes, migrating All night long as the southern tip of the Milky Way Exploded in shining white Fireflies flew too often And moreover the winds incessantly shook the trees, So the birds could not sleep peacefully And now are so noisy Yet Only because I barely stepped into this woods Loud like this Louder like this They are crying like a shower of rain What strange fellows! This is a big cypress woods, and Miyazawa Kenji's "Preface" and Other Poems Upon each of the pitch-black branches Here and there shreds of sky are Trembling and respiring, To send out a kind of catalog Of the lights of all ages ......As the birds are so noisy I am standing, blank...... The path flows far away, barely white And from a dent in a clump of trees A red, turbid Mars rises Only two of the birds at some time came here stealthily And went away leaving clear, screeching sounds Ah, as the winds blow sending the sensations Of warmth and silver molecules And all the tetrahedrons, And fireflies fly fitfully, The birds cry louder than the rain I hear my dead sister's voice From the farthest end of the woods ......So even if it's no longer so, As with anyone it’s the same No need to think about it again...... The grass vapors and cedar smell The birds are noisy again Why do they cry so loud? Even when the men drawing water for rice paddies Walk furtively at the edge of the woods And the stars shoot again and again in the southern sky, There’s nothing very dangerous One may sleep quietly