Masayo Koike Poems

From one side to the other
Just like a piece of cloth completely caught by the wind
I want to go on living
I am a cloth but
Like a person who sees me
Sees the wind and forgets the cloth
I become the wind
Then in a valley where the wind stopped
Suddenly I become once again a rag
Caught in the branch of the tree, above me
A new wind blows from afar
In a shape no one recognizes
The rag addresses the wind
‘I'm looking at you from here'
With a newborn baby's coldest cry
At that very time
The wind was born
Now, crossing a suspension bridge
Now, competing with the water on the river
Blowing through valleys
I am the wind
The pain of separation from cloth
My first memory of emotion
The pain of cloth dispatching the wind
Is the oldest sensation that I have experienced
The rag will rot away at the bottom of a deep valley
And the wind
With no memories no homeland no relatives
Because of its isolation is in a state of transparency
Overtaking isolation
The wind once more continues to blow
...

It was the autumn of my fifth year when I encountered the antelope
In the hot springs spa deep in the Hodaka mountain range
The antelope silently drew near
Through the steam it looked at my naked body
I too stared at the antelope

Separated from the herd an antelope
Me completely on my own
I scooped up hot water from the spa in the palm of my hand
And threw it at the antelope
It was a greeting in lieu of language but
The antelope seemed a little startled
When I saw the furry chest of the antelope wet with hot water
I felt as if the solitude of the antelope had moistened

The wind swept across
The leaves on the trees shook
Finally the antelope silently turned around
Silently sprang up and returned to the mountains

To the spa in my dreams
In the dead of night gently I put my toes into the hot water
Through the steam opposite I can hear faint steps
That antelope
Returns each time

Not looking at anything with its cosmic vast eyes
Drops of water from its furry chest
Dripping drip drip
...

Late at night the Daikokuya bathhouse is quiet
An old woman bone-tired
Even naked unable to be free of dirt
Rattling the door
Comes in
From the nozzle of the shower with the tap loose
Water makes a dripping sound
Bare-footed the cool of the night softly steals in
From the high skylight
The water is rocking
Overflowing the edge of the bath
I
Pass no judgement
Like a log
I look at the female bodies
I saw
Naked backs, hips and backsides
Private parts
The water flowing over their bodies
Fallen head-hair
The many hollows of the female body
Water gathering there
Dripping down
I feel as if I have been looking at this
For years over and over again
I also saw the wall separating the men's and women's baths
And I took my time to make certain that
Like a wild beast
Nobody
Climed from the men's into the women's bath
Or the other way
Amazed
...

In one moment on an evening like this
Summer is drawing to a close
In front of a greengrocer
Holding out a vegetable
The woman's young upper arm
In front of the take-away food shop
Counting her change
Her sad profile
Everything bathed in the light
Has quietly
Been drawn into the past
The leaves high on the tree just sway green
What is that power
Why doesn't it stop the summer?
Abandoned in the grasses
Between the wheels of the bicycle grass begins to grow
To my bared arm
I press
My lips
Bitter
Terribly bitter
...

In a small town in the American South
In a second-hand bookshop in decline
In the poetry corner
I found an edition of Emily Dickinson's poems
Small enough to fit into the palm of the hand
When I opened the book
Only a scrap of the title page
Mercilessly torn out remained
A jagged tear ran along diagonally
Possibly
With love
Or
To you with love
Or
To my darling
Or
I vow unending love
Or
With a dedication from an unknown sender
A secret, unforgettable phrase was written here
Thinking of the lost lines
I returned the collection to the shelf
The weak winter sunlight from the window
Warms the dust on the tiny spine
Of the one dollar Dickinson volume
To remain unsold
Was this her secret role?
Like the bird that cannot fly
Because part of a wing is missing
...

When he appears
All grows visibly darker
Suddenly the air takes on dampness
So everybody knows
That the rainman has finally arrived

Women are worried
What will happen to the quilts hung out to dry
They will be late for their meetings
At the same time strangely
When the rainman appears some women say that they grow calm
Between their fingers, between their thighs and at the corners of their eyes
Some women say they grow moist

Once the rainman appeared under the eaves
It was rain he caused himself but
It always felt as if it was someone else's fault
That was
Particularly sad for the rainman
To make matters worse the rainman
Doesn't have a single friend

Everyone knows the rainman
They all realise immediately that it's the rainman yet
They don't know how to speak to him

Once the rainman jotted down in his notebook

"Do I go to my death just making rain?"

At that very moment drops of rain began to fall
The ink ran
The words were washed away
What on earth was written there?
Not even he could read it.
...

Descending down to the bottom at the end
Of the snow-covered slope
Lies an old spring water well

Darkly swaying clear water surface
On careful inspection there
Steam rises

Unconsciously I dipped my hand in
I was struck
Embraced by the earth
Warm water

Before I could ask why
Already there was
Delivered there
And arrived temperature

As if ashamed
Of its speed
Instead of language
The water had turned to rising steam

I also
Lay the burden of language down
And soaked my hands silently in the water

To reply
To the words of the spring
...

I have never seen numerals as silent as this
15
Then
25
Countless numerals submerged completely
The bus timetable for Ushiozumachi, Kaga City
Had only two numbers written there
Twice a day
10:15 and
15:25
From deep in the heavy, cloudy sky
Light snow had begun to fall unnoticed
The faint sound of an engine somewhere
Before my very eyes
A transparent bus that should not exist came along
The windows were fogged
The heads of the passengers were hanging down
The driver's eyes were like puddles
When my heart alone had boarded, the doors shut and
The bus departed
Towards a dim, shadowy place in the centre of the snowy sky
Looking down no one was at the Ushiozu bus stop
On the cold timetable
15
And
25
Surrounding it fallen thick on the ground
The depths of time
...

Onto the elm tree
A bird alighted
In the atmosphere
Silently time passed by a matter of degrees
The bird's weight is being measured by
Someone with an unfamiliar hand
But
Small creature with your pebble's worth of flesh
You who have wings
Did you have any weight in the first place?
The speed of life
Always resolves into the horizontal
The weight of flesh dangling vertically
Alive, we
Go on living without sensing
The shameless weight of our flesh
Where did the bird go?
Into what place was your airy weight dissolved?
In the clean air whence the bird took wing
Always
The branch sways as if to reply
The branch sways concealing its reply
...

When we returned from the trip
His
Face indicated that something had ended
The trip had
Indisputably ended
The journey's end encroached on
Numerous other things that
Seemed to be approaching numerous endings
Let's go on another trip,
Let's come back to Italy again,
Chatting like this at the end of the journey
Somewhere deep deep within us
Something had already ended between us
For sometime afterwards we remained within the ending but
One day suddenly he began to talk
I think we should separate
At these words
For the first time a feeling that something was amiss grew in me
Yet for a long long time
I too lived within the ending
An ending at the time that
When I ended it
I felt
That there ought be a new beginning
Between him and me
Being eaten away by our ending
Even things around us one by one crumbled
The oven telephone fridge printer
Glasses all broke, even the window pane broke
The ending of everything continued
Almost new, refreshing
All the endings
Fell around me and collected like snow
...