…
Every day my anxiety grew deeper,
until it enveloped me so thickly
that I could see nothing.
Alone in an illimitable desert
I wept hopelessly, as if in a nightmare in dawn
where the open mouth blue sky wept with me.
…
~Nakamura Chio*
my gift to you today…awakening seeds of calmness… right diligence
*cited:
Women Poets of Japan
K Rexroth & I Atsumi
There is a peaceful community
in a place of burned up hopes,
beside the tracks of dreams
that drifted away
on the edge of a village
where crowds pass by.
There, men gather in harmony
to gaze like sheep and fawns.
On all the beautiful flowers
a sun comes and goes
through the clouds in freedom.
~Mitsui Futabako*
*cited:
Women Poets of Japan
K Rexroth & I Atsumi
Mother
I am always afraid of my mother,
ominous, threatening,
a pain in the depths of my consciousness.
My mother is like a shell,
so easily broken.
Yet the fact that I was born
bearing my mother’s shadow
cannot be changed.
She is like a cherished, bitter dream
my nerves cannot forget
even after I awake.
She prevents all freedom of movement.
If I move she quickly breaks,
and the splinters stab me.
~Nagase Kiyoko*
*cited:
Women Poets of Japan
Trans: K Rexroth & I Atsumi
The colors of the flowers fade
as the long rain fall,
as lost in thought,
I grow older.
~Ono no Komachi*
*cited:
Women Poets of Japan
Trans: K Rexroth & I Atsumi
Spring is going;
hesitating and indecisive,
the last cherry blossom
~Buson*
*cited:
Haiku Master Buson
Trans: Y Sawa & E Shiffert
It is unreasonable to ask my tears
to bear the sorrow of autumn,
as the light changes
the color even of the cinnamon tree in the moon
to red and yellow.
~Shunzei’s Daughter*
*cited:
The Burning Heart
K Rexroth & I Atsumi
Who knows
that in the depth of the ravine
of the mountain of my hidden heart
a firefly of my love is aflame.
~Abutsu-Ni*
*cited:
Women Poets of Japan
K Rexroth & I Atsumi
It’s Not The Same
The demonstrators who…filled the streets…
the suicide core of the…who attacked…
And the students who charged against the riot staves of police…
They weren’t the same people.
…
what happened to all those people after that?
Nothing is ever quite the same
each time is different from every other
the heart of each person is disconnected.
But if there is one thing
that is the same,
it is that neither the newspapers nor television
ever reported on those young men after that.
And
the enemy in the world today
is not the United States,
is not the Soviet Union
but, bridged between you and me
unidentifiable
words of silence.
~Fukunaka Tomoko*
*cited:
The Burning Heart
K Rexroth & I Atsumi
a meditative journey 
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