communal chopsticks,
and the tips
they
mouth
poked into pickles
noodles, rice
the daylight's
long in its descent;
it's by
gray shadow
I write
my pre-candle poem
ugly
as facial scars
this natural
summer-tangerine,
and how bitter
on my tongue!
it might be
Rembrandt:
candleglow shadow
and
a student
over his text
only English
spoken round
the mountain hut
table --
oh, how silent
is my Japanese
into peyote, he tells me,
and all the
rest,
that huddled Japanese
translating the
master's
mu
dear Rebecca,
cursing your own people,
you'll
never Zen
the long, the lonely
road
from communal vegetables
and rice,
how
solitary
the wet night walk
back to my mountain
hut
gaining
at least
a two-day growth
of
beard
in my Hut of the Small Mind
clutching
bank kleenex
as I squat:
I hear
rain slanting
against the shed
I came,
it seems,
to write solitary poems
in
my Hut
of the Small Mind
these burly
summer-mikan
might be sumo
wrestlers
waiting
at ringside
do these pine-tree cutters
on their
trees
before the noodle shop
sometimes look at these
Matsuyama hills,
these fields of rice?
Soseki,
you came to these
Matsuyama
hills,
chucking away
careers
it's wabi
of course:
the old
tangerine
crate
against the hut's mud wall
modern civilization?
a black butterfly
in from
the rain
through my mountain hut's
battered
door
eating
the peach,
I wonder
how
natural
it is
this natural
peach
with its natural
color
and natural worm,
can I suck it natural?
eating my peach
in the quiet rain,
I
listen
to the master's
verse
how minute
the complexities
of even this small
world
round
the morning meal
with a rag
I wipe the kitchen
floor
wood;
and with a rag
I wipe it again
one sharp verbal blow
from the master
straight
at the bull's-eye
of her desire:
Rebecca's
tears
this rice bowl
I hold
in the rain --
oh, I
want to rinse
after the floss!
back
propped against a wall:
I prepare
to
listen
to light
same meal,
same faces,
same chopstick
plunge,
and still, still,
this mountain hut
life
no waiting
for guests
or for love
at my Hut
of the Small Mind
a motley crew,
some bearded, some in
battered
work-a-day clothes,
we make our own
way
from these mountain huts
at last
at the public bath
a public back
wash
and my hot spring
soak!
how multiple
the uses of my
mountain
towel,
sometimes for washing,
sometimes for
rain
lolling
in their genital
towels,
those hot
spring
discussants
it was
a day
of stories by the young
of
their troubled
trips
on the disco
floor
in the armless arms
of
the young,
I remember other backs, other faces
they are young
and young and young,
their
mountain farm energy
even in their dappled
disco
dance
how they peered
at the disco bill
until
"grandpa"
pulled out
a ten thousand
told
I'll be a good gramp:
it's not
with
much delight
I look at Rebecca's young face
nothing
to catch, to clutch,
though I
extend
my hand
this disco night
it's in pouring
rain
I stick out my thumb
to
bum
a midnight ride to my hut
again
clutching bank kleenex,
I squat --
was
it ages ago
I foretold Buddha's shitstick?
at Natural Farm
is it all futile,
this
attempt
to let it all
hang out?
my body
unmasks
in candleglow
the
rain
down down
trying to make up
my Namu Amida Butsus
on these
missed mountain nights,
I give the dead one
several
extras
interfering rain,
how will I make
that slippery
way
down the mud
with my tomorrow bag?
a drenched chicken
pecking
at
splashes
before the mountain hut
kitchen
woodgathering
in rain,
Rebecca in her blue
poncho:
I have scribbled
my morning poem
my chopsticks
dig
into the communal
salad:
final breakfast
at Do Nothing Farm
I taste
this potato
in gruel;
I savor the
salt
in this pickled plum
at the master's
feet,
two Americans,
one
Japanese,
and a white hen
like
a Don Quixote
with a Chinese beard,
the
master came,
the master went away
like masters
of Zen,
appearing,
disappearing:
three chickens
at Do Nothing
Farm
that mud
on your nose,
Rebecca,
tells
me
this world is right
at the hot spring, Jiro,
you did not cover
your
physical self,
but what you left covered, Jiro,
was
immense
urinating
from my hut door,
I too join
this
rain
on green leaf
in this natural world
tears, sighs, blows,
all
faded,
faded in the steady rain
on my hut
once,
seeing my smile
that did its silent
work,
the master stopped
his word-flow
whether I stay
or don't,
whether I write
my
article or let it pass,
I am in this Hut of the Small
Mind
wanting to stay,
I could not,
and leaving,
I
wanted
to write ten thousand poems
my interview-less
interview is over,
and bag in
hand,
I descend
the muddy road
as if clutching
the master's
thirty-one,
I
leave
Do Nothing Farm
no farewell
except
this calligraphy'd
sheet,
I watch the master
trudge off in mountain
rain
that balloon
he dre
with a
brush
carries
all the nothingness away!
as if expelled
from further room
at the
inn,
I leave
my Hut of the Small Mind
I see another
arrival
for his own
three-day
as if a brief fondled mu
can be tucked
away
in muddy trousers
and muddy shoes
I go
down
the mud-filled road
from the Hut of the Small
Mind
throat bearded,
I back into
the world
from
Do Nothing
Farm
I drag down
the sabi emptiness
of my mountain
hut;
in Kyoto
there's rain
changing
into another gyration
of self,
I
return
to the everyday whirl
I shave away
my do-nothing life,
all the
dampness
unfolded and left out to dry,
and still: that
solidity on my shoes
away from
Do Nothing Farm,
and this
rain-stilled
Kyoto night
is tender, is sad
the American
that took
my place,
is he
watching
Rebecca's sad eyes?
it rains
on and on,
and the mountain
damp
extends
even to my Kyoto bath
in a taxi
along this Kyoto street,
two
hairstyles
of sumo wrestlers
from the back window . .
.
After reading Takuboku's tanka in translation in 1964, Sanford Goldstein began writing his own tanka in English. He has been translating Japanese tanka collections with Seishi Shinoda since that time as well. For twenty-eight years he has been writing ten tanka a day, sometimes more during periods of crisis, at times less when the tensions in his life abated. He has lived in Japan twelve years during six different trips of two years each, all those years teaching English to university students. A teacher at Purdue for thirty-six years until his retirement in 1992, he plans to return to Japan in 1993 where he has been invited to join the faculty of a new Japanese college, Keiwa College in Shibata, Japan.
Books of tanka by Sanford Goldstein:
This Tanka World
Gaijin Aesthetics
At the Hut of the Small Mind
Translations of tanka collections by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda:
Akiko Yosano, Tangled Hair
Takuboku Ishikawa, Sad Toys
Mokichi Saito, Red Lights
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At the Hut of the Small Mind. Copyright © 1992 Sanford Goldstein.
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