Selections from Spira Mirabilis


By Michiyo Kawano


Translated by Eric Selland


The Hollow at the Top of the Mountain


In the hollow at the top of the mountain I lay down, as if a natural occurrence, never having imagined nor strongly desired.

Something from somewhere, as if torn off, drifts into the sad depression as large as life. Something comes rolling over, turns cold as ice, held tight like a fist. Something like a shoot or a sprout torn to shreds.

The mute constellation travelling gently overhead makes the twisting and turning emptiness between the stars creak like bones. Revealed in darkness, lost in light, that distance, secret, indistinct.

The still rainwater gathered in the hollow reflects an image of myself in the starlight, moistens it, and holds it aloft within this fleeting reflection. I become the thing imagined, the thing desired, overflow these contours, and trickle down transparently in the appearance of dew.

The Observer's Mode of Life (I)


There is a being regarding which contemplation is permissible only to a brain like an infant's - undetectable by any sense organ, impossible to see, will not accept things in any form from the external environment into itself, nor will it enter into other things, it is unbreakable, unformed, at all times identical to itself.

A Gentle Slope


Losing myself in wisps of nostalgic white clouds, I slip along the gentle slope of pointy fish scales broken, decaying, still moistened by the memory of grasping the sphere. Already the way is veiled in the scent of minced water, and from the tip of my nose to the far edge of the glare, it is as if it were perpetually entangled.

Gradually I become heavier, then with the intermingling of a shadowy moving object which attempts to smooth out its splintered tracks, I make it mimic my bent shape.

Then as my double lines up to receive the equivalent light of counterbalancing, of contrary evidence, the depths of the languidly rippling water at long last are sensed, and all things gaze off into the distance, watching as emotions separate themselves from me and finally settle down.

The Height of Emotion


At the water's depths. Sleep belonging to no one spreads, is seen dimly. At the water's depths, having lost all weight, drifting about like a commonplace bubble, I resonate in the indistinct images of things around me.

The sand is marked with a mysterious wave pattern, one which runs counter to the current that produced my own. Facing upstream, it migrates in reverse. Shadows in the transparent water gradually shift their positions, Occasionally allowing the brightness in to spill over the sand.

Once, that expanse of minute grains of sand, lively at one moment then calm the next, got into my eyes and made me dizzy. Suddenly, I felt the fullness of the shimmering sand's granularity. Then, rising up from that spot, surpassing its own ever-changing splendor, the wave pattern went against

While in the midst of something like an abstract grief, I become rigid. If there were someone who could see, with a certain uneasiness, they would probably call it a gnarled rainbow, ominously spanning the underwater region. Now the water's shadows deepen. The twilight travels across my entire body. Night comes of itself, settles into its soundlessness, and is long.

The Observer's Mode of Life (II)


It is space and yet something eternal. It prepares a place for all things, one fitting for each; all things just as they are and as they should be, all things created. If even for one moment you desire to possess it, to seize it unerringly, you must act not with blind touch but the cleverness of disguise. Because one can't say that is making good. We gaze in reverie at this unity as if in a dream, and speak of the licentiousness of any attempt at interpretation.

Remembrance and Embodiment


Once between my fingernails appeared that moment of dawn's fragrant, dangerously crystalline clarity, so bright it is as if all senses other than sight were made mute. The memory of that quantity of light endlessly dripping, and the shivers running up my spine, adorned this embodiment for a while, held suspended, in a manner of speaking, in the form of a bewildering bead-like shape.

The area fit me. Exposed to heavy rains and winds, it formed a boundary, a liminal zone, where the thunder could be heard resounding from deep within the interior. This was particularly so on those days when the clouds roiled gloomily, then were split apart.

Even so, more than the radiance which had disappeared, it was the voice innocently lost in the confusion that cast the longest shadow in my heart.

In the occasional wind there was often this voice - awkward, timid, not exactly resisting, nor fluttering, nor quietly slacking off in the waning afternoon, its consolation being, rather than a cold glitter, the etching of that light into the wheel of the sky.




Michiyo Kawano was born in Fukuoka, Japan. She began publishing in the 1970s. Producing finely honed poems fusing metaphysical and musical qualities, her first book received praise from major writers, but she has remained little known due to her preference for keeping a distance from the public. She was awarded the Yomiuri Prize in 2009.