A Winter Song (for T.)
The splendor and sadness of the night sky's prosperity Several stars break out from the dust And sink Inside a frozen container Why is the echo audible to us In this place where there is no love Most roofs Do not grow in the sun Our roof of stones And the narrow windows for winter Dangle the end of a broken thread Over the man's unbending heart Most never return here In a region which calls to cats and wind A man in a creaky bed lowers his eyes As if seeking with his hands Deep inside the grimy straw Things which surpass death Things with no knots The fullness of an extravagant love Soon none of the windows will open anymore Not even the smallest of landscapes will appear Through the windswept exterior The many sinking stars And the trace of many minutes Must have passed once In that man's sleepless eyes And in his skin He seeks a woman's love The man's lewd teeth and choking under arrest And the dried roots of the tree in the field Despite the liquid infused from the earth endlessly devoted to spring It will never grow in abundance Only a certain depth indicated by an ocean's orderliness is retained Now for the first time In the man's darkened eyes The many sunken stars become wet And gradually begin to shine In the immense echoes of the winter dawn Which embraces that huge containerA Picture of Summer
This summer, the mercantile port and the dredging ships Engage in a fanatical ritual of plants The masts get all jazzed up like treetops And the wind blows the leaves Which hold many speckled bird's eggs Into the captain's hat He falls head over heels and now Nuts from the trees ripen in his crotch Full speed ahead to the open sea! In the midst of the green waves The ocean too is a mosaic of green leaves Now halt! The ship's flag will be torn by the plant's thorns The green holiday Not even the sun can sneak a peek A sailor's dog pees on the ship's deck It too moves toward the plant's thorns The ship is completely entangled in green vines When unraveled they begin to dry Now the ship makes landfall and lies still Becomes a stand of great trees It lays down one thousand stones which clutch at the roots From the many branches emerge a thousand birds Who are sent home to an island Where succulent peaches grow Far out in the open sea surrounded by wavesA Landscape
The green trees grow luxuriantly Reaching into every corner Out of the teeth of wild beasts Covering the ships and the coast Even the gardens of the grand mansions In time the roses covered with thorns grow rampant Climbing over the bay windows made of stone As far as the edge of the egg-shaped shell deep inside a woman They surround and tenderly embrace all things It is the completely transformed figure of a floating world With no beginning A world which teeters beneath the infusion of rain For a moment it becomes visible in a flash of lightning The roosters who prefer to stroll through the kitchen The yellowed legs of a frog dangling From the tremendously aroused hands of a baker The extremely quiet sky which draws near A region of the setting sun which Faintly begins to leak green The lights from the houses in a town where the wiggling necks And tin feet of turtles can be seen Now mother appears Food substances are consecrated inside a great vessel Fig leaves and beautifully breaking dew are displayed Below the things and the landscape Drying until they turn yellow The happy family gathers round
Minoru Yoshioka (1919-1990) was one of the most important poets of Japan's postwar period. With Modernist and Surrealist influence, he became the most influential practitioner of experimental poetry by the 1960s, carrying on a creative dialogue with the Butoh dance and painting. His later work focused on the practice of appropriation and collage.