setting the dewdrops trembling
on the aronia.
Reading it over, I feel it isna€™t particularly interesting, but neither is it downright bad. Then I try Shadow of blossoms
shadowed form of a woman
hazy on the ground.
This one has too many season words.7 Stil , what does it matter? The point of the exercise is simply to become calm and detached.
Inaria€™s fox god
has changed to a womana€™s shape
under the hazed moon.8
But this one is quite absurd, and I have to laugh.
At this rate al wil be wel . I am now enjoying myself, and I begin jotting down poem after poem as each occurs to me.
Shaking down the stars
out of the spring night, she wears
them bright in her hair.
A
New-washed hair, perhaps
dampened by moisture from the clouds
of this night of spring.
A
O spring! This evening
that beauteous figure deigned
to sing the world her song.
A
Such a moonlit night
when from the aronia tree
its spirit issues forth.
A
Poem upon poem
wandering here and there
in the spring moonlight.
Now at last the spring
draws swiftly to its finish.
How alone I am.
As I scribble away, a drowsiness creeps upon me.
Perhaps the word a€?entranceda€ is the most fitting to use here. No one can remain aware in deep sleep; when the mind is conscious and clear, on the other hand, no one can be completely oblivious to the outside world. But between these two states exists a fragile realm of phantasms and visions, too vague to be cal ed waking, too alert to be termed sleep. It is as if the two worlds of sleep and waking were placed in a single pot and thoroughly mixed together with the brush of poetry. Naturea€™s real colors are spread thin to the very door of dream; the universe is drawn unaltered a little way inside that other misty realm. The magic hand of Morpheus smoothes from the real worlda€™s surfaces al their sharp angles, while within this softened realm a tiny pulse of self stil faintly beats. Like smoke that clings to the ground and cannot rise, your soul cannot quite bring itself to leave behind its physical shel . The spirit hovers, hesitant yet urging to find release, until final y you can no longer sustain it in this unfeeling realm, and now the invisible distil ations of the universe pervade and wreathe themselves whole about the body, producing a sensation of clinging, of yearning love.
I am wandering in this realm between sleep and waking, when the door from the corridor slides smoothly open, and suddenly in the doorway appears, like a phantom, the shape of a woman. I am not surprised, nor am I afraid. I simply gaze at it with pleasure. The word a€?gazea€ is perhaps a little strong. Rather say that the phantom slips easily in under my closed eyelids. It comes gliding into the room, traveling soundlessly over the matting like a spirit lady walking on water. Since Ia€™m watching from beneath closed eyelids, I cannot be sure, but she seems pale, long-necked, and possessed of a luxuriance of hair. The effect is rather like the blurred photographs that people produce these days, held up to view against lamplight.
The phantom pauses before the cupboard. It opens, and a white arm emerges smoothly from the sleeve, glimmering softly in the darkness. The cupboard closes again. The waters of the matting float the phantom back across them to the door. The sliding door closes of its own accord.
Gradual y I slip down into a rich, deep sleep, a state that I imagine must resemble that in which you have died to your human form but have not yet taken on the horse or ox form that is to be yours in your next life.
