Pho to n (excerpt)

“Pho to n” (excerpt 1)

Japanese original version by Fujiwara Akiko:

それではみなさんさようならこれは手紙です忘れてもいい

名まえと読めない文字がスッタカタダンスするこれ野暮用

です萌黄いろ吹きいろうすいかみの分厚い本を枕許におい

てしいっ！だから黙っているおれは絡まりうしろへ還るよ

生きいそいで見失うな待っているいつか淋しい天使の触手

を約束してくれまだ不可能な響えとしてでも言葉なくして

信じられる　それまでみなさんさようならこれは手紙で

English translation by Miller Waku:

OK everyone, so long, here’s a letter, a shuffle-dancing of forgettable names and unreadable text and dull chores and there goes the grass-colored blown-colored thick book of thin paper beside the pillow! So shut up and I’ll tangle with something and head back to the rear. Don’t lose sight of me amid the lively haste for I’ll be waiting and make a pledge one day of a lonely angel’s antennae however impossible the example, believable in the absence of words and until then so long everyone, here’s a letter... 

“Pho to n” (excerpt 2)

Japanese original version by Fujiwara Akiko:

丘とも孤やまともいえる

向きあってうねを抱きかわす 偽たいは

斜交いならば　 ふれ遇ったかに映りうき みづつむ目もある

くすの樹の洞くつはおなじように 融け　 ならぶ背よりそらへ

曲がるうでにある 憶いはもっとも　ちかしいと 瞬いた

うすらゆきの積る　 やわい洞の木も 二 通をここでもとめ

きおくの時音と雨やどりする　よびかけの森ちかく　ベンチで千々を待つ

草やみちの公園を　わたしはゆるう　だろうと

一 語のみをとり　ゆび灯りでほうようした

そこにいつかより来る　 祝福のつなり枝は　そもか

前髪にもたりない

こ等へはじめの目のために 先の夕暮れには　蔓をならべ　た白傘花がみつわり

明けにかけても　おき忘れたちいさき音をやすらえる 垂や花びら

ひとの

ひろげた手が　芯に名残ることもなく　ひきいて昇り ふたたび花びらや

となりの　に対をながめあっている

ぼくはほせないけれど　捨てえなく踏む　火かりのあしの

つづく　あかりのみちた会話は　途にやすむ母衣からも

渇れるよ

水辺には　つめないたくさんのいきの舟　あらかう浮力と

不他たびふりむく目もまた　丘にも孤やまにも

English translation by Miller Waku:

We can call it a low peak or a lone peek

Facing each other and embracing one another’s ridges   Pseudoforms

if leaning toward each other   look to have touched   Here too eyes that embrace all

The same with the cave of the camphor trees   melting   heights arrayed in order

Blinking   that the thought held   in the folded arms   is the most intimate

Amid a dusting of snow   a soft tree by a cave   verbally seeks two epistles

Taking refuge from the rain with the time and sounds of memory

on a bench near a copse of summoning   I await the fragments

That I would   countenance    the park of grasses and paths

I took but a single word   comprehending with a finger lamp

To there from sometime would arrive   a laudatory limb  

though hardly enough even

for bangs

For the first eye in eyeshot   white floral ephemera vining   

braiding in the impending evening

Putting at ease forgotten small shoes left behind   a halo and petals   

into the morning 

Someone’s 

open hand   draws upward   leaving no traces on the heart of things 

again the petals and 

adjacently   two pairs gazing of one another 

Mute am I   yet the persistence of illuminated conversation   of luminous feet

that tread the undiscardable spills out from a hood resting 

in the lane

By the water’s edge   is a boat loaded   with countless life impossible to grasp

violently buoyant   and the eyes look back anew toward a low peak, 

toward a lone peek

“Pho to n” (excerpt 3)

Japanese original version by Fujiwara Akiko:

この樹はおおきくなった　

いくつかのゆるい組土に　

枝をかざしたたかった　

ととのえてまた振り捨て　

見ごろしてきた草の想を　

かぎりなく忘れこの樹は

このきは　

おおきく　

なれない　

あなたを　

いくつも　

のこした　

いくつも

いくつも　ゆめのしべを抱きとめ生きるものにまきれ　こゆうの

固有の片隅に机をおいて　

窓越しに空の模様と　

憂をおう日記をつけている

八月八日日たたかはきまときす終わります　

記念碑の写真はかか掲ってまだすこし歩きます　

西陽が射息のこもる二階の実験室に手をつく堂の　

育てかた書き足す白いひとが来ました　

焼夷あとに神鳴りをあつめる灰色の影のおじいさんと　

ここで雨宿りするあいだ折り紙をおしえてもらいます　

いまはない住所を大切に折り込むのだといいました　　

配達先は路面電車に近い空き地　 水面には

ひとが入っていく姿が映ります

English translation by Miller Waku:

This tree thrusts branches

violently into the plural looseness

of ancestral sod

preened and cast off

forgetting utterly any notions of the forsaken grasses

this tree

This tree

has left

many of

you who

can’t get

any bigger

so many

I embrace   and hold back the stuff of several dreams and blend with living

things   as it were

As it is I have placed a desk in a corner

and am keeping a diary to keep track of the changing sky

and the vines outside the window

The battle of the eighty-eighth day is bound to end soon

I just take a photo of the monument and walk a bit

A pale figure comes and adds something in writing about the care of the vines

that cling to the third-floor laboratory where breath hangs heavy under the western sun

Ashen hydrangea gather thunder on the scorched earth

I get some tips in origami while taking shelter from the rain

I explained that I would carefully fold in an address that is no longer

The delivery is to a vacant lot near the streetcar line   And the water

reflects the image of someone going in

“Pho to n” (excerpt 4)

Japanese original version by Fujiwara Akiko:

舟底の裸せた紋毬のうえ　

ぼくは誰にも気づかれずにもう何千年　

坐っているのだろう

折って返しつづけた指は　

擦れてみじかくなりすぎた　

だけどきみに　せめて関節だけは渡したい　これは　

何千地分のこころ　視ることの叶わなかった　

ことば

あ　かる　

うあ る　

く屑き　そは

空をいし　　

吹く息の底へ　てをそえて　

よをはちぐ杖も　たつかに発つ　

ほ　は

夢のなか　

ひとのような生きものをたくさん乗せた帆かけ舟が　

水際にあかるい影をつくる　

延びつづく　樹の　奥で　ゆるく膝を抱え　

音をたてず揺れている実を　ながめていた　

ときどき　口がひとりでにうごく

きみの　声だ　

ただかいはきっともうすぐ終わる、　

おおきくなるごの樹がある、から。　

きみの傍にはみとりの森が生える、

そして　

みつけるよ　話していた

たづわりあう、さなちあう耳へとひらく色があった。踏みわけて奥かに　

咲いたいつも、歩いているよ。葉境から何かいはじめ　ひの堕ちる旅へ　

語りかける、白い円い花が灯るように浮かぶ。儚くあかなく。ふたたび　

色が光りをあつめつくまで舟影はまわり、あ　ときえない水脈を曳いて、　

いっしょにあると信じた。

からだち　殻だち　きみへうつり　

つたわる憂はどこまでも延び往き、いみの傍で不意しのひながらよわく　

遠くまる笑みを架ける。ひらくとなだらかに透し、あえかな音をまもり。　

みとりのすまいに　すいきれていく　

遠景の白い円にみちいるひを浴びた殻、　咲む仕草へ慰みあう土にぼくは、

生えた、花に肥なって、村むせいへとかさなる内丹は川橋の音を、抱き　

あえるだろう。水にあいまたなう、　ほくらには名があり　それはさびしい。　

花し、羽割り、光りまおう　

それがほうりよくでないならば、ぼくはきみを忘れない。やわらかに目　

をひらく幼いあなたが丘や孤山て声につき、包みあう骨の灰の群れから　

射ちわるいたみを合唱し、身体にちからがあったこと。さく音色さなつ　

くぼくたちの生映え。舟底で眠っている指とゆびを、 編んでかさねる。

English translation by Miller Waku:

How many thousands of years have I been sitting
here on the faded carpet on the floor of the ship
unnoticed by anyone?

Fingers bent back and forth
wore until they became too short

But I’d like to have given you   at least the joints   this being 
thousands of books worth of soul   Words that went 

unread

light   ly

(re)ambu   la

tory tree   delec
tables turned
Laying hands   onto the bottom of the breath that blows
And the cane that taps along the earth lets off in setting off 

could   be

In a dream
a sailboat carrying all sorts of living things like people
cuts a bright figure at the water’s edge

Sitting beyond the   tree   that keeps growing   and holding my
knees loosely
I stared   at the silently swaying fruit

Occasionally   the mouth moves as on its own

It’s your   voice

The battle is bound to end soon
thanks to this tree that will grow.
A mourning forest will grow up beside you
and then . . .

I’ll find you   Talking were

A color was that opened into ears that worked together, that hung together.
I’m always walking through them when they’ve bloomed faintly. Starting
from the phyllosphere and orating an odyssey under the setting sun, white
round flowers arose aglow, ephemeral and unyielding. The figure of the ship
turned until the color had gathered light to register anew, catching the
incessant aqueous vein, and I felt one with things.

Moltingly   sloughing off   and shifting to you

The climbing vine stretches on forever, adjacent to meaning it casts a smile weakly into the distance while reaching unexpectedly. Opening releases a gentle transparency, stewards a faint sound.

Sucking things dry   in the residence of mourning

As the slough basked in the white round fullness of the distant sun, I took
hold in the mutually consoling soil of gestured picking. Bundling as flowers,
the actual voices pile on multitudinously, surely able to embrace the sound of
the river mist. Doing of the water, we have names, which is a shame. 

Lumen frolic! Fluorescing, efflorescing

Be that not violence, I’ll not forget you. Young, you were of a bodily strength,
opening your eyes gently and assuming a voice amid the low peaks and lone
peeks, enveloping and enveloped by the hoard of bones turned to ash, from
which arose a pulverizing chorus of grief, our naked forms drawn to the rending timbres. I weave atop one another the fingers and digits asleep on the
floor of the ship.

“Pho to n” (excerpt 5)

Japanese original version by Fujiwara Akiko:

（それはぼくらの鼓動　だった　から）

じゃん石に躓いて石住往住しているうちに西陽が底を傷ましいほどに照らすじっとして　

ただみていた言葉が足音にじて呼ばれるまで　そばで平和な時代の演劇部員たちがいチ

ミツバシをくわえて足りないゆびの歌をうたいじぬる。　 生まれて直ぐ憶える石の名を

呼びじかんはないとわかるまで道化役者に舞台はないがゆたかなものほ惑きもののよう

にあなたの目を射しその先へぬける　非情灯は非常に旨いぼくらは近づきすぎて器官と　

主語を放ちなげるとき痛いだろう。だから球体にヨチの弾力を渡しここの井戸の緑に　

埋めた木彫形身がするかなし顔をかえしにいくそのうちの複数はゆびの丘ムウムウへ　

昇りそれが生きものだったときの絵を描いてほしいと思う。なつかしい母音をはじめて　

しったぼくがきえてその後にぢからは届かないように　けれど誘めないツメの手紙は残っている。　

English translation by Miller Waku:

(because that   was    our heartbeat)

As everyone runs about every which way stumbling over the timestone the western sun shines downward warming things almost painfully and patiently taking in the spectacle are words awaiting the summons of vocalization. Off to the side drama troupers of a peaceful era munch on honeyed bread and begin singing songs of missing fingers. Calling the names of stones remembered at birth the comic actors though without a stage until they realize that time is running out are of a richness as if possessed that pierces your eye and bursts into the beyond. A callous emergency lamp emerges blindly and we come too close whereupon casting off our organs and subjectivity is unmistakably painful. So we impart Thurhere resilience to the orb and embedded in the rim of the well of the spirit are timbers and mementoes whose sad visages we would return whereupon the multiplicity ascends Therethurhere of the fingered hill and I long for a picture of it when it was a living thing. Gone is the me who first learned the longingly remembered motherly vowels and strength fails but a letter of unreadable text remains.