Japanese Notebook

The falling blossom
I saw drift back to the branch
was a butterfly
Moritake


for Takashi Tsujii

The circular window
(unglazed)
in the shrine at Kamakura
borrows the landscape and transforms it
into a roundel on the wall

The rice grains
in the porcelain
of the teacup
let through light

Bridge of a spider’s web
leaves resting on it
as on the telephone wires
above the bamboo grove

Legs of the spider
halfway between
the shambling of a crab
and the parrot’s claw
scaling the wires of its cage
in laborious methodical ascent

Immense wooden temples
that look like celestial barns
full of invisible grain

Fat ropes of straw
embrace and sanctify
the trunks of the ancient pines
that climb so high
before their foliage begins

A tree mummified in bandages
it has been there seven hundred years
and must be fortified
against the diseases of old age

A bamboo pipe drips
dropping condensation
from rocks into a well
already overflowing

The falling leaf
that turns out not to be
Moritake’s butterfly
has reached the ground

Basho’s cicada drills no rocks
but emerges from the dust
a tarnished link
in the foodchain of the ants
lifting it by its feelers

Clouds
that keep removing
the miniature mountains of Izu
have abolished Fuji

Charles Tomlinson, Skywriting. Manchester : Carcanet, 2003, repris dans New Collected Poems, 2009.

Carnet japonais

La fleur tombée
que j’ai vu dériver vers la branche
était un papillon
Moritake