Names of Death

ℙ𝕣𝕠𝕝𝕠𝕘𝕦𝕖

 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕔𝕦𝕣𝕣𝕖𝕟𝕥 

 𝕡𝕦𝕝𝕝𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕝𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥𝕤

 𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕠 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕟𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥*

Issa (1763-1826) Japanese haiku of death

Shuga

   For as long as he can remember, he has been on the run all the time. This was not due to specific events. Rather, it represented an internal compulsion, encoded deep in his bloodstream. He could not tame any place, make it safe and his own. Besides, he did not desire the peaceful haven that poets so often decried. He had a strong hunger for sensations, so he mostly provoked them on his own. He traveled around every corner of the island without any desired destination - just for the sheer pleasure of wandering. From each place he tried to pinch something for himself, which would last with him for future incarnations.

   Death walked at his side like a faithful dog, occasionally growling deafeningly. It even happened to bite him severely. During one of his mountain escapades, he was gored by a mountain bear. It seemed to him at the time that with one foot he had reached the Pure Land, glorified in Buddhist sutras.

   He lay under a sheet of crystalline water, breathing freely and inertly. He looked at the single rays of sunlight that penetrated the crests of the waves, gently breaking. They slowly took away all passion, sorrow and fear. A cocoon of perfect silence surrounded him. He nestled himself between its sticky threads.

   And although the hands of a goody woman brought him back to life then, the impression of the other side, something more than clear lines and rational order, has accompanied him ever since.

   He did not have the soul of a dreamer, and even if he did, it was quickly wiped from him. He grew up with a sense of instability, the clang of weapons and the hiss of fire on burning rooftops. He learned to kill because it was required of him. It caused him neither pleasure nor revulsion - it was icy indifference, like blood stagnating under his fingernails.

   He never lost control of himself. Before heading to bed, he would reach for a couple of capfuls of sake, but he had no intention of getting drunk. He would walk around the red district, where pretty women opened up to him like waving flowers, but he never achieved complete satisfaction. He was drawn to gambling, but not enough to leave all his property behind.

   He looked at the enchanting coastal landscape, seeing only impermanence, destruction and the element of death everywhere. Paradoxically, these were the defining features of constancy in his life.

   That evening he was making the circuit of the military garrisons. He never imagined that their inhabitants would turn out to be so wilful. They savored in hedonistic weaknesses, dissipating their discipline and strength in successive orgasms at the village whores and in opium - the wizard of dreams. He could not think of an adequate way to discipline them. They had their old habits and not a shred of ambition. Pathetic pervs!

   They treated it with devout respect, seeing in it the only hope for change. Whether it would lead to positive or negative consequences, they waited longingly for it. Their souls were so filthy and weak that leadership over them could be assumed by anyone, if they possessed even a modicum of higher motives. What use would he have of them?

   Fortifications needed fortification, observatories needed expansion, moisture-soaked gunpowder needed to be removed from half-decaying warehouses. No, these people would not resist even a troop of ants advancing on them!

  He was furious. He needed a new army, not this bunch of courtly twits! Shabby, powdered pseudo-artists and carnies! He cursed bitterly. He didn't know what his next decision should be.

   Of course, he could, like others, relieve the tension in dancing, stimulants and the embrace of courtesans. This city winked at him in understanding, leading him into temptation. However, he waved his hand at its untrained courtship.

   He walked through the town square, which was deserted at this hour. He headed down toward the river, shuffling through winding streets barely lit by the glow of paper lanterns.

   He passed the guards unnoticed. Using a rope and a hook, he climbed the defensive wall and jumped over it with childlike ease. He suppressed the urge to knock out the dimwitted guards. He threw only another steak of curses in their direction.

  He stood above the blackening depths, near a clump of dry calamus. He decided to take a swim. He slowly stripped off layer after layer of clothing. Naked, he was ready to face the eternal secret of the river, swirling around the rocks with an angry gurgle. Behind his back stretched a dense wall of towering pines that no sensible person would dare to cross at this hour. Unless he were a murderer, lurking in the shadows of the trees for his prey.

   He closed his eyes for a moment and blended into the terrifying wildness of nature - unchanged for centuries, not subordinated to the interference of human intentions. He liked the strange sensation of losing the ins and outs of his own body and becoming a primordial part of nature. Jumping into the water under these circumstances would have crept up on suicide. He didn't worry about it, as he believed he could emerge from any oppression unharmed. Fear was never his weakness.

   He was even more ashamed that (in such a crude and obvious way) it was a woman.

translated specially for YOU by  KLUヌードルSKI

credits to: Sywia Waszewska