Kyoto
World's end, the sunlight that fell down to earth was warm, a warm windblowing through the flowers.
On a wooden bridge, the dust that morning silent, a mailbox red & shining allday long, a solitary baby carriage on the street, a lonely pinwheel.
No one around who lived there, not a soul, no children playing there, & I with noone near or dear to me, no obligation but to watch the color of the sky above aweathervane.
Not that I was bored. The taste of honey in the air, nothing substantial butenough to eat & live from.
I was smoking cigarettes, but only to enjoy their fragrance. And weirdly I couldonly smoke them out of doors.
For now my worldly goods consisted of a single towel. I didn't own a pillow,much less a futon mattress. True I still had a tooth brush, but the only book Iowned had nothing but blank pages. Still I enjoyed the heft of it when I wouldhold it in my hands from time to time.
Women were lovely objects but not once did I try to go with one. It was enoughto dream about them.
Something unspeakable would urge me on, & then my heart, although my lifewas purposeless, started pounding with a kind of hope.
*
*
In the woods was a very strange park, where women, children & men wouldstroll by smiling wildly. They spoke a language I didn't understand & showedemotions I couldn't unravel.
Looking up at the sky, I saw a spider web, silver & shining.
YOU ARE READING
the poems of Nakahara Chūya
PoesíaBorn in 1907, Nakahara Chuya was one of the most gifted and colourful of Japan's early modern poets. A bohemian romantic, his death at the early age of thirty, coupled with the delicacy of his imagery, have led to him being compared to the greatest...
